Persona ARCHETYPE
by Mister Zer0
Summary: There are things more frightening than having to fight Shadows in order to save the world from annihilation. Unfortunately, boarding school can be one of them. (Cast is almost entirely OC.)
1. Dreams, Reality, and Something Between

Since I need something to pad out the start of each chapter so that it doesn't screw up the formatting on the epigraph, here's a completely pointless disclaimer containing information that should surprise nobody: all the SMT Persona stuff in this belongs to Atlus, I'm not trying to steal it and make my own game or anything, etcetera etcetera.

* * *

><p><em>"...I'm just one of the many students here."<br>__-Harold Westbrook_

* * *

><p><em>September 8, 2014<em>

Vicki Long had never thought of herself as a bad girl, not in the sense the term was typically used. Perhaps a bit too willing to put down those lower than her on the social hierarchy that, despite the best efforts of its staff, had nevertheless formed among the students of Westbrook Academy. It was a fault she would admit to, if reluctantly; and always holding to the defense that if she did not go along with the crowd, she would become its next victim.

Clearly, though, whatever was chasing after her had no interest in listening to that defense.

It seemed as though she had only just emerged from the coffee shop when the bizarre entity had made itself known; a blob of black, it seemed at first, with a faint red blotch at around waist height. It was not until it hurtled towards her faster than she thought possible, and the red blotch revealed itself to be a mask, that she realized the danger she was in.

There was nobody else nearby; it was past closing time for the coffee shop, it door locking behind Vicki as she existed. And the lone streetlight that should have illuminated the environs had been extinguished, its illumination disappearing with a loud pop the moment she first noticed her hunter.

And so Vicki ran, fleeing from the small town's streets into the surrounding woods. Whatever chased her was no animal; with luck, she thought, her pursuer would meet their match in the twisted trees and shadows. Once she had escaped, she could return to the dorms, protected by high walls and what she found herself desperately hoping would prove to be working lights.

It wasn't until a black hand grabbed her ankle, an unnatural chill causing her to stumble and trip over an exposed root, that she realized her error.

The black creature loomed over her as she turned. Vicki still could not identify her attacker; there was precious little light to reveal her surroundings. All that was certain was that although it was no beast of the forest, neither was it human; nearly a dozen arms reached out from its form, some with hands whose fingers ended in claws that gleamed in the pale moonlight, sharper than any of the swords that the school's fencing instructor used. For an instant, she counted herself lucky that such a hand was not the one that grabbed her, although she realized in the next instant that it was not likely to remain so for long.

The creature lifted an arm, and Vicki struggled to keep from closing her eyes in fear. For some reason she could not put into words, she was suddenly determined not to give whatever entity had chased her the satisfaction. If she was to die, she suddenly felt, let it be without flinching.

And so, when the arm failed to cleave her head from her neck, she knew why: it had instead gone flying from the body of the creature in a flash of steel.

Vicki did not know when the newcomer had arrived, but she was grateful regardless. It was a man; or at least, he appeared to be a man, if young and wearing a long coat of what appeared to be gray leather. From where he stood his face was not visible, although there was likely not enough light for it to matter anyway. In his right hand he held a thin-bladed sword with an ornate hilt of wirework, and in his left a phone. The screen shone just brightly enough that she could tell that her savior wore leather gloves, the same gray as his coat.

"You shall not claim her, shadow," the newcomer said. His voice was masked, the electronic distortion like something out of a TV show. "Flee, or perish by my hand."

Undaunted by his bravado, the creature lashed out with three of its arms, but the newcomer was too fast. The first he dodged around, and the others he sliced through, the severed limbs bubbling away into nothingness as they fell to the earth. A guttural hiss rose from whatever the creature had for a throat as new arms grew outward to replace them.

"They never flee," the newcomer said with a hint of resignation before raising his phone, the screen facing towards the black blob. Its light gave Vicki the first chance she had to truly see her attacker; it was a mass of inky shadows, a red theater mask in the shape of a laughing face sliding across its form. "Marduk!" the newcomer screamed, and the phone began to glow brighter than she thought possible from any such device.

The light became a burst that forced Vicki to cover her eyes, and when it faded, the newcomer had been joined by what she could only describe as a giant of a medieval knight, standing some nine feet. Its armor glowed a faint purple, and it held a sword longer than she was tall in one hand and a shield just as large in the other.

The knight lifted its sword with impossible ease and pointed the tip of its blade at the shadow-thing. It shrank back ever so slightly, as though preparing to flee, but before it could, a burst of flame rose from the ground, engulfing it. An inhuman scream pierced the air, and then there was silence, the flames consuming every trace of the shadow-thing before dying away.

The new arrival turned to face Vicki as the knight lowered its sword. She still could not identify her savior; the bulk of the man's dark-skinned face was concealed beneath a white mask that reminded her of a butterfly. "Who...who are you?"

"Someone who can fight those things," the man said. "If you need a name, call me Monarch."

"What the hell are they?" Vicki asked.

"It's a long story," Monarch said as Marduk circled around behind Vicki, facing outward from the pair. "Stay low. I don't think it was out here alone."

An echoing, inhuman roar served to confirm those words as three new shadow-creatures leaped forward from the darkness of the woods. Rather than red masks, theirs were blue and shaped into a crying face rather than laughing; but otherwise, they looked and moved the same as the first. One of them held back, while the other two charged towards Vicki from either side.

Monarch was the first to act, the thin sword stabbing forward and piercing the mask's left eye. The creature let out a bubbling hiss before exploding into a small cloud black dust that soon became nothing. Marduk had already moved to stop the other, his sword cleaving the creature in two. Both halves soon met the same fate. The last of the three seemed to think better of joining its compatriots, instead electing to turn and fleeing into the woods.

"Th..." Vicki started to say, but found herself unable to finish the word, let alone the sentence, as a wave of exhaustion struck like a blow from a champion boxer. Her knees wobbled, her vision blurred, and she was unconscious before she hit the ground.

* * *

><p>Adam Burton was not someone who often remembered his dreams. To be sure, he would know that he had dreamt upon awakening. Sometimes he might even retain a few shreds of whatever tapestry his unconscious mind had woven, although they rarely lasted for more than a few minutes before fading into nothingness. But to recall the bulk of a dream...this had never been a common occurrence during the sixteen years that he had thus far lived.<p>

And yet, as he gazed upon the blue walls of the chamber he now stood within, the high school student knew that this was a dream he would remember in its entirety.

This struck Adam as peculiar at first, for even he was aware of the difficulty of remaining within a dream after recognizing it as such. Nevertheless, the dream did not waver, and after a moment he allowed himself to take in the chamber.

It was not a large chamber, perhaps the size of a school classroom. Blue velvet curtains hung from each wall, and the floor was blue marble of the same shade. Two dozen long wooden benches, each polished and stained a dark brown that was very nearly black, lay arranged in a chevron pattern that opened up in front of a lectern that rose seamlessly from the floor.

A man stood behind the lectern, although his back was turned to Adam. He was a short man, and very nearly bald. White hair framed the sides of his head, some of the longer strands falling against a well-tailored black suit. He was silent and unmoving, as though his attention was elsewhere.

Adam started to walk towards the man at the lectern, but before he could make it past even one of the benches, the man turned around to face the dreamer. His nose was long; impossibly so, Adam thought; and his eyes were all but inhuman: bulging, bloodshot, and lacking any visible iris.

The man at the lectern made a sweeping gesture with his right arm as he bowed to greet Adam. "Welcome to the Velvet Room, young man," he said, pressing a white-gloved hand to his chest. "My name is Igor, and you...well, you are not what I would call an entirely expected guest. No matter. Please, have a seat."

Adam settled in at a bench to his left as Igor continued to speak from the lectern. "It is odd that you have been sent to this place. His interests in...well, it is not my place to question the one I serve. He did wish that you be brought here..." The elderly man suddenly stopped and narrowed one of his eyes, peering closely at Adam. "And you do seem to have the potential."

"Where am I?" Adam asked. _Sleeping_, he thought to himself, a reflexive answer that he nevertheless knew was not the one he sought.

"As I told you earlier," Igor said, "you are currently within the Velvet Room. It is a place of my master's creation, existing outside both dream and reality, beyond the conscious and the unconscious." He gave Adam a brief, toothy smile, before continuing. "Not all people can perceive this place, even in their dreams. Only those with a certain rare gift..." He trailed off. "But perhaps I overstep my bounds. He only just informed me of your coming, after all, and from what I was told I can only assume that you know nothing of this gift."

Adam frowned. "What gift?"

"You will learn soon enough, young man," Igor said before reaching into his breast pocket and retrieving a small item. "Of this, I am quite certain. But for now, let me ask you: do you believe in destiny?" He opened his hand, revealing the item to be a box of Tarot cards.

The frown on Adam's face deepened at the question. "Of course not."

"But there is so much it can teach us," Igor said as he opened the box and began to draw cards from it. As he spoke, he showed Adam each card before releasing it. Rather than fall to the ground, though, they floated in front of Igor, defying whatever the dream apparently had instead of gravity. "After all, even if one controls their own fate..." The Fool, although its close-cropped black hair made the figure resemble Adam himself. "It is still necessary to decide what that fate should be." The Emperor, but with a young, clean-shaven man of African descent wearing a gray suit and tie rather than an elderly white man in a red robe. "For if we do not strive to shape the world into what we wish for it to become..." Death, although the red-haired woman sitting atop the horse was nevertheless anything but dead. "We will instead find ourselves shaped by it." Justice; a brunette seated on a brownstone throne, holding a book and a noose instead of a sword and scales.

"I don't understand," Adam said. Igor simply smiled and returned the cards to their box, and the box to his breast pocket.

"As I said before, you will, soon enough. Perhaps I will even be the one to aid you in this understanding...so long as you agree to this." Igor lifted a sheet of paper from the lectern and handed it to Adam.

The youth read over the paper. _I, the undersigned, hereby swear and affirm that I choose of my own free will the fate that lies before me, and that lies before all those who follow me. I swear and affirm that I shall abide by the consequences of my choice, and all choices to come as a result..._ "What the hell is this?"

"A contract," Igor said. "It should be straightforward enough; you simply acknowledge that what you do, you do without coercion. And that what happens because of what you do, you will accept."

Adam looked over the contract again, then back to Igor. "But what about what you said before that? About deciding one's own fate?"

"That is precisely the point, young man," Igor said. "To choose your fate is to choose the consequences of that fate. But if you are confused, you need not sign just yet. After all, we will meet again."

"When?" Adam asked.

"When it is time for you to be shown the mask which you have so long worn," Igor said in reply. "Now, if you are not going to sign the contract until then, I'm afraid I must ask you to leave. There is much work that needs to be done. My master can be quite insistent about certain matters, you see. He is not someone I wish to disappoint. Farewell, Adam Burton."

The world dropped out from beneath Adam as he awoke.

* * *

><p>In a dark room that both did and did not exist, the young man who had called himself "Monarch" earlier that evening removed his mask and let out a breath.<p>

"It's getting worse. The Shadows aren't just coming through one or two at a time now. I found a pack of four chasing one of the other students. Almost didn't save her."

The other man in the dark room stood, expressionless, from across a black marble table that served as the only visible furnishing. His skin was as pale as Monarch's was dark, with long brown hair tied into a ponytail and a mask that could have been a twin to the one that had just been removed. Instead of a gray leather coat, he wore a black shirt and pants that almost seemed to be a single article of clothing. "What would you have me do?" he asked in a tone that lacked any trace of emotion.

"Since you won't fight them directly for God knows what reason," Monarch said with a frustrated tone, "I would have you point me to the source, or at least tell me what I can do to keep the Shadows from entering my world."

"I cannot," the other man said. "I am bound by my role, just as you..."

"Don't give me that crap!" Monarch said, slamming his right hand, open-palmed, against the table. "A girl could have died tonight! If you want me to keep that from happening, you'd better..."

"I had 'better' do what?"

The room stood silent for a moment. "You really don't care, do you?" Monarch finally asked in a quiet tone.

"Do you care?" the other man said.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Monarch said, anger returning to his voice. "Of course I care! I wouldn't be this pissed off if..."

"Then I must care as well," the other man said. "It is as Marduk told you when first you called him forth."

Monarch rolled his eyes. "So what, you care, but you're not going to do anything that makes it look like you care?"

"I have already acted in ways that 'make it look like I care'," the other man said. "I cannot act openly against the Shadows, because to do so would invite a far greater threat into this reality. Instead, I granted you my mask, and bade you act in my stead. The true enemy sees this, and knows that I am prepared to act should my hand be forced."

"And that's why you can't tell me anything other than 'monsters called Shadows want to kill everyone, I'll give you a magic smartphone app that can stop them'?"

The other man shook his head. "You know that the power of Persona is not..."

"Of course I know that," Monarch said. "The sea of my soul, etcetera etcetera. The point is, why is that information something you can't share?"

"Were I to explain why it is forbidden for me to reveal the knowledge you seek," the other man said, his voice still emotionless, "that would itself require me to reveal forbidden knowledge. But you need not fear the Shadows, young general. You have already found your army, and soon, your army will have its champion. His journey is only just beginning, but..." For the first time, the other man's expression changed, becoming a smile. "There are powers in this universe that smile on those such as he."

"My 'champion' had better get here quick, then," Monarch said. "The full moon is tomorrow, and now that I've figured out that the Shadows are tied to the lunar cycle - something else you said was forbidden knowledge, by the way - I think I can safely assume that we'll want his help sooner rather than later."

"I can promise you this," the other man said. "You will indeed meet him before the sun next sets."

* * *

><p><em>September 9, 2014<em>

"The Westbrook Academy is a school with a fascinating history behind it."

The man speaking to Adam Burton was not as ancient-looking as the man from his strange dream, but he was nevertheless old. Easily in his seventies, Adam felt, with thinning gray-white hair and silver-rimmed round glasses that framed a face as narrow as the rest of him. He looked, simply put, exactly how you would expect a man with the position of "boarding school headmaster" to look.

"Abraham Westbrook was born in the deep South, a black child in an area where Jim Crow laws were the order of the day. Orphaned at a very young age, he was placed in a home run by a group of Catholic nuns who impressed on him at a very young age the importance of a good education. As an adult, he used this education..."

The elderly figure escorting Adam on a tour of the Westbrook Academy campus continued his lecture, but the youth had ceased to pay much attention. He already knew the rest, after all. Westbrook founded what would eventually become a regionally prominent electronics chain before being acquired by Best Buy, and used the money to fund a school that 'would ensure that he would not be the only child of humble beginnings to benefit from a quality education'.

"...to benefit from a quality education," the headmaster continued. _Yes_, Adam thought to himself, _he's just quoting the pamphlet. Figured as much._ "Half of the students here are much like yourself: children at the peak of their school's academic rankings, but whose parents lack the finances necessary to..."

And again, Adam returned to ignoring the headmaster. For a moment he thought the man might deviate from his plainly memorized speech, but that was apparently not going to be the case: like the school's founder, it seemed, Adam Burton was himself an orphan. It had only been a few months since his parents died in that car accident: the very same day he had been notified that he had been accepted to Westbrook Academy, as fate would have it.

It made things easier, Adam had to admit; his aunt had been named his legal guardian, and as much fun as he had always had whenever she visited, even Adam could tell that the woman was ill-suited to act as a mother. To his parents, Westbrook Academy was an opportunity that he might never again see the equal of; to his aunt, the Academy was a lucky break.

Adam turned the corner of the hallway, and barely stopped himself from running into the headmaster; the man was speaking to another student, a black teenager in a... "...gray suit and tie," Adam found himself whispering, just loud enough for the headmaster to hear.

"Ah, good, there you are. I'd like you to meet someone." The headmaster stepped to one side. "This is Harold Westbrook, Abraham's great-grandson. He's a junior here, like you. Harold, this is one of our new students, Adam Burton." Harold offered a hand in greeting, and acting entirely on social instinct, Adam shook it. _He was on the Emperor card in that dream_, Adam thought to himself. _How is that...?_

"It's good to meet you," Harold said. "Anyway, Headmaster..."

"Please," the headmaster replied. "Call me Peter. Or Mr. Kells, if you must."

Harold shook his head. "No, Headmaster. I don't want any special treatment. While I'm at the Academy, I'm just one of the many students here."

"But I can't just..."

"You can, and you will, Headmaster," Harold insisted. "My great-grandfather wanted this school to be free of all class hierarchy. If you won't respect my wishes, then respect his."

"I...I'll try," Headmaster Kells replied. "But it's just...well, your family has done so much for this school."

"My family," Harold said. "Not me. I haven't done anything yet besides spend my sophomore year within these walls."

The headmaster opened his mouth, for a moment, then closed it again. "If you insist. If you wouldn't mind doing one favor, though, could you finish showing Adam around the school for me? I should get back to my office."

"If you insist," Harold said, to which the headmaster nodded. "Very well, then. I leave Adam in your capable hands." As he turned and walked away, Harold rolled his eyes. "I swear, he always does that."

"What?" Adam asked. "Round up other students to do stuff he doesn't have time for?"

"No...well, that too," Harold admitted. "He always makes me talk like that. If I don't sound like some stuffed shirt, he acts like I'm disrespecting my family." He sighed, then grinned faintly. "Normally, I'd make a crack about old white guys right about now, but I'm not sure how you'd take it."

Adam chuckled. "For the next fifty years or so, I'd say it doesn't apply to me, so go ahead."

"I'll keep that in mind," Harold said, allowing his grin to widen. "Come on, I've got some friends I want you to meet."

* * *

><p>Harold's path to his friends led Adam through several hallways and sets of doors, giving the new arrival time to observe the other students. The mixture was far more wide-ranging than at Adam's old school, something that Harold soon seemed to realize Adam had noticed.<p>

"It's a quirk of how the scholarship system is set up," he said. "If you're in the top ten percent of your school and below the median income for your area, you're allowed to apply. And given that you don't get many schools with a real mix of black kids and white kids anymore, let alone..." He stopped suddenly, both in speech and footsteps. "I'm starting to talk like that again, aren't I? Going to lose my street cred if I keep it up."

"You have street cred?" Adam asked.

"I'm a black kid in what would be a small town were it not for the Academy," Harold said. "It's one of those 'until proven otherwise, and probably even then' deals."

"Odd how they're all dressed, though," Adam said. "It's like eight different uniforms at once." For although Harold was hardly the only one wearing a suit and tie, they were in a wide range of colors, as well as a number who simply wore a long-sleeved buttoned shirt above their waist instead of the full suit.

"The administration say it's about allowing individual expression without it turning into a way to divide people up based on how much money their parents make," Harold explained. "Or something like that. Anyway, we're here."

The door that Harold had stopped at was of an orange-painted metal, with a black-and-tan plaque to the left of the door reading "STUDY HALL C" in block text. Along the wall on the right was a mural depicting a forest at night. Snow-covered pine trees rose up towards the cloudless sky, the stars dots of pale yellow against the deep blue. On the right side of the mural, presumably somewhere far in the distance, some unnamed city rose above the trees like light-spattered hands reaching to grasp the heavens.

"That was actually done by one of the students," Harold said as he opened the door. "Kid's a bit out there, but he knows his way around a paintbrush."

The first thing that caught Adam's attention was the large stone door at the far end of the study hall. It was a dark gray, framed in an arch made from the same stone that made it look like something that belonged in a castle instead of a school. The rest of the room, though, looked far more normal for a study hall. Dark wooden computer desks ran the length of one of the walls, the cables spilling out from the back onto the orange carpet. The rest of the room was filled with long tables made from similar wood, tan plastic chairs scattered between the desks.

At one of the tables in the center, two teenage girls sat across from each other. One of them was tall, with brown hair and a white buttoned shirt hanging over a black tee. Despite the textbook that the girl was holding, Adam could make out the words "SCIENCE: Ruining Everything Since 1543" across the black shirt. "Ah, good, you're back," she said without looking up. "It occurred to me that you never got that sample we needed last night. I know those..."

"Not now, Dana," Harold said, just hastily enough for Adam to notice. "There's a new student here."

"Really?" the other girl said, shoulder-length red hair rotating along with the head that bore it as she looked at the new arrivals. Her outfit was somewhat more formal than Dana's, consisting of brown slacks and a tan polo shirt over which she wore an unbuttoned brown suit jacket. A notebook computer sat in front of her, although the angle kept Adam from seeing much if any of the screen. "He scholarship or one of the rich jerks?"

"You're not supposed to draw those distinctions here, Judy," Dana replied, still not looking up from the textbook. "The teachers have been riding you on that since you started here, and you know how Harold feels about using his name to bail you out."

"I'm not the one who drew the class lines," Judy said as she turned back towards her computer. "So stop acting like it's my job to erase them. Besides, I'm sure there's rich kids out there who aren't jerks. Who knows, maybe one of them will even attend the Academy someday."

"Can we put it on pause for a moment?" Harold said forcefully before turning back towards Adam. "Meet Dana Schuler and Judy Keene. Dana, Judy, this is Adam Burton. He just arrived today."

"You think it's him, then?" Dana asked.

"Not. Now." Harold said.

"Then I'm getting back to work on this project," Judy said. "I still need to see if my side-channel attack on a known personal data repository will provide the necessary cryptographically insecure information that I can use to breach the administrative access restrictions on the school network."

"Meaning...what, exactly?" Adam asked.

"She's looking up teachers on Facebook and seeing if any of them used really stupid passwords," Harold said. "Don't worry, I got the network people to sign off on it. It's an internal politics thing."

"And yes, I know it's not technically a side-channel attack," Judy added. "But it really doesn't count as social engineering if they gave away the necessary information without you even needing to contact them to request it."

"I don't know about that," Dana said. "You're attacking the implementation of the system rather than the system itself. It may not be a cryptographic attack, but side-channel would still be an otherwise accurate term, I'd think."

"When did you start paying attention to stuff like that?"

"When I decided that knowledge was important, maybe?"

Harold sighed as the not-quite-squabble between the two girls continued. "They're going to be like this for a while. Feel free to tune them out for now."

"Does..." Adam pauses, trying to remember the name. "Does Judy always talk like that?"

"Only to mess with people she's just met," Harold says. "It's actually a good sign. If she didn't care enough to talk like that, it'd mean she'd just want you to go away and never bug her again."

"If you say so," Adam said. "Anyway, question for you."

"Shoot."

Adam gestured to the stone door at the rear of the study hall. "Where does that door go?"

The conversation stopped as three pairs of eyes fixed themselves on Adam Burton. Dana was the first to speak.

"The stone door at the back of the hall? You can see it?"


	2. The Spark That Set the Flames

Since I need something to pad out the start of each chapter so that it doesn't screw up the formatting on the epigraph, here's a completely pointless disclaimer containing information that should surprise nobody: all the SMT Persona stuff in this belongs to Atlus, I'm not trying to steal it and make my own game or anything, etcetera etcetera.

* * *

><p><em>"Nothing good ever comes from the word 'ordained'."<br>__-Dana Schuler_

* * *

><p>"This is some sort of joke, right?"<p>

To say Adam was confused by the reaction of the other students was something of an understatement, albeit one that fell sort of the level typically used for hyperbolic comparisons such as 'was to say that being on the surface of the sun might warrant turning on a fan'. Still, confusion was indeed the order of the day upon his face, and it didn't take long before Harold hurried to explain.

"No, it's..." He sighed. "Well, it's complicated. And I'm not sure how much of it you'll believe at first." Harold rubbed a finger along his chin. "But the door...cannot be perceived by most students. And every attempt to..."

"I hate to interrupt," Dana said. "Well, actually, given the circumstances, I really don't. Adam, was it?"

Adam nodded.

"Take out your phone, open the camera, and point it at the door."

The youth pulled the phone from his pocket, pointed the camera lens towards the stone door, and tapped the icon. He glanced from the screen to the door, then back to the screen. "It's not there." For instead of an arched stone door, there was a perfectly ordinary wall of black-spackled gray plaster.

"No, it's not," Judy said. "We're not sure why, but for some reason, the three of us are the only ones who can see that door." She paused. "Well, the four of us now."

"And what's..." Adam stopped. "No, this can't be real. This is some kind of joke, right? Some kind of 'ha ha ha, let's all mess with the new kid' type of thing? Use projectors or something to set up a fake door that doesn't show up on a camera?"

"It's quite real," Dana said. "And I'm still not sure how it conceals its existence from others. There appears to be a physical presence, but apparently it's harder to convince random students to touch a blank wall than you might think." As he spoke, she set her textbook down, stood up, and walked towards the door. "For now, I'm working under the hypothesis that the door influences the mind in some fashion, that invisibility is its default state unless someone who is intended to perceive the door looks in its direction. Such an ability would also explain the reluctance by those affected to initiate physical contact with the door; it may even be the same effect that causes the door's invisibility."

Adam blinked, then sighed. "Okay, I'll play along for now. So what's the point of the door? Where does it go?"

"Into shadow," Harold said. "I mean, I could go into a detailed description, but there's really no point to doing so. When Judy and I tried to explain it to Dana after she saw it, all she heard was 'the door leads into shadow'."

"Those exact words," Dana confirmed. "Which is further support for my hypothesis that its properties function by affecting the mind in some manner. Unfortunately, it's difficult to test that in any meaningful fashion. I'm trying to figure out alternate approaches, but I suspect it will take some time still."

"I'll have to take your word for it," Adam said as he walked towards the stone door. "So, when can I actually understand what's on the other side of the door? After I enter?"

Judy nodded. "You go in, you come out, the door stops messing with your ears. Or your brain, I suppose."

Adam came to a stop before the door, his right hand halfway towards its surface. "Wait, is there something that'd keep me from coming out?"

"The door leads into shadow," the others replied, the intonation of the words too perfectly synchronized for it to be natural. Adam, for his park, simply shook his head and sighed. "Of course it does," he muttered. "Alright, let's get some light in there." He reached forward, his fingers touching the stone-

_This door is not open to you, Adam Burton._

Adam froze, and the world froze with him. The words that he "heard" were not spoken, nor did they even have what could be called a voice. Instead, they appeared fully-formed in his head, as though he was imagining them himself.

_Know that the path you walk has already been ordained, and it is not this path. The door shall not open for you until you have reached your destination and awakened your inner self. Be on your guard until then, young champion, for shadows are cast in daylight more easily than at night._

The world sped back up, and Adam jumped backwards before grunting in pain as the inside of his left leg struck a stray chair. The others frowned, but Harold was the first to speak. "Okay, that's probably not what any of us experienced."

"I really hope not," Adam said, rubbing his hand along the sore spot on his leg. "It was some sort of telepathic...thing. It said the door wasn't open yet, and something about an ordained path and shadows cast in daylight."

"Wonderful," Dana said with a frustrated tone. "Nothing good ever comes from the word 'ordained'."

"The rest of that message doesn't sound much better," Harold says. "There's something else that you should know, Adam."

* * *

><p>He sat on a throne, in and before the darkness.<p>

The throne was not in any sort of room or castle, not as human senses could perceive it or human minds could comprehend it. Yet a throne it was, one fit for an entity such as he: a bat-winged entity of ebon chitin and pincers, with a face that was featureless save for three round black eyes and a golden crown covered in spikes.

"Our enemy has brought a new pawn into play, it seems."

Five figures stood in the darkness surrounding the throne, their forms indistinct at best. The noises they made were such that no human tongue could ever hope to mimic them, but the one who sat on the throne understood regardless.

"No. This one has been rejected by Westbrook's door."

One of the figures began to writhe suddenly, its noises raising in volume.

"Indeed. There is only one who would have a higher claim than the door's creator." The figure on the throne paused. "Philemon's servants grow bolder, if one such as he is to be made active in the struggle."

A different figure began to 'speak', if such a term could be applied.

"Naturally," the figure on the throne said. "I cannot let such an act of escalation go unchecked. But it is not as simple as you would wish. Even now, to act openly would incur greater attention from his master and invite greater retaliation. A few stray Shadows are one thing, but ever since the events in..." He stopped. "Ah, of course. That is the key."

The figure on the throne pointed towards the second of the figures in darkness. "You will have your wish, it seems. Gather your forces, for today we shall pluck these thorns from our side."

* * *

><p>"So, the short version is that the Shadows want to kill us all, and you guys can summon stuff to fight them. Am I getting this right?"<p>

Adam found it difficult to keep the doubt from creeping into his voice, despite the encounter with the door. A weird talking door that might not actually exist was one thing, but beings made of living shadow that can be fought by monsters called forth from phones? Well, maybe that wasn't much more implausible than the door, but it was still hard for the new student to wrap his mind around.

"That's a very crude way of putting it," Dana said, "but basically that's it. I'd offer a demonstration, but when either Shadows or Personae show up, bad things seem to happen to electrical devices nearby. The app seems to make our phones immune, but Judy has her computer here, so..."

"Thanks for your concern," Judy said, her voice riding the edge between sarcastic and earnest.

"And Personas...Personae...those are the monsters you guys summon, right?" Adam asked, to which Harold nodded. "We each have one. Mine is called Marduk, Judy's is Hecate, and Dana can call up Vapula."

"I'd ask if this had anything to do with the other side of the door," Adam said, "but I think I already know the answer. Did you come up with the names yourselves, or..."

"No, the door leads into shadow," Dana said, the last five words in the same too-smooth intonation as before.

"Of course," Adam muttered. "Don't know why I expected anything different."

Dana blinked. "Wait, what did you hear me say?"

"The exact words were 'no, the door leads into shadow'," Adam said.

A smile stretched across Dana's face. "Interesting. Let me try a few other statements, tell me which ones you hear. Number one, the door leads into shadow. Number two, I do not need to be on the other side of the door to summon my Persona. Number three, the door leads into shadow. Number four, the door leads into shadow. Number five, we do not know from where the Shadows originate, but we are confident that it is not the other side of the door."

"Two and five were the only statements not replaced," Adam said.

"Fascinating." Dana's eyes were nearly gleaming now. "That means that while the door will censor statements regardless of accuracy, it will only censor affirmative statements about what lies on the other side. Of course, that's with the exception of..." Her voice changed suddenly. "The door leads into shadow."

"And that time you were cut off just after 'with the exception of'," Adam offered.

"As expected," Dana said.

"Yeah, but that doesn't help much," Judy said. "We can run through fifty thousand things that aren't true about the other side of the door without even scratching the surface. It'll be faster to just wait, assuming that what Harold told us is true."

"I'm quite certain that it is. Excessive secrecy aside, he hasn't actually lied to us yet." Harold said.

"Who hasn't?" Adam asked.

"The door leads into shadow," the others replied.

Adam groaned. "Wonderful. So someone who may or may not actually exist is helping you summon monsters to fight other monsters. There's no way that this is going to backfire horribly."

Harold sighed. "We have no choice in the matter, I'm afraid," he said. "I have already seen the Shadows attack other students. Thus far, it has always been late enough at night that the attacks can be written off as bad dreams, but the rumors have begun to circulate nevertheless. Furthermore..." He stopped mid-sentence. "Actually, I do not know if I can finish that sentence without rendering it impossible for you to hear."

"I think I'm starting to hate that door," Adam said.

"Been there," Dana said. "And that's even without taking into account what happened to me when I tried to open it." She frowned. "I'm just glad that..."

Darkness filled the room before she could finish her sentence.

* * *

><p>A red figure stalked through the halls of Westbrook Academy, a horde of Shadows at its flank.<p>

Students and staff alike stood frozen in the greenish dark that had replaced the normal light, the clock refusing to tick from one second into the next. For a moment, the figure pondered attacking one of the frozen students directly, but swiftly decided against it. Even if it was a certainty that the figure's master would approve, holding time still was a difficult enough thing to maintain. To selectively allow time to pass so that his attack could actually cause harm was an even greater challenge. Nyx had resolved the problem in her own way, this much the figure knew. Unfortunately, that was not a power which the figure was permitted to touch.

"They are here somewhere," the red figure said to a pair of Shadows, wheels of black iron with a golden lion's head in the center. "Find them, and lure them to me. We do not have an excess of leisure in this matter, and you will move faster on your own."

The lion-wheels spun in place once, twice, and then rolled into the distance.

"The rest of you," the figure said, "be ready. When the Wheels return, we will need to strike swiftly. A Shadow Hour cannot last forever, and if it collapses while we remain in the Academy…" The sentence was left unfinished. His retribution would be swift and brutal; that much, the figure and the Shadows knew all too well.

* * *

><p>"What the hell?" Adam said, his eyes slowly adjusting. The lights that should have shone down from the ceiling had gone dark, a strange greenish glow that seemed to come from nowhere replacing them. Dana's monitor had gone dark, and a dark fluid that almost seemed to be blood was leaking from cracks in the walls.<p>

"I don't know," Harold said as he reached for his phone. "But there's no chance it's good, and there's even less of a chance that the Shadows aren't involved." Dana and Judy brought their phones out, the screen on each glowing a pure white.

"Marduk!" "Vapula!" "Hecate!"

Three voices rang out, and three new figures appeared. The first stood near Harold: a knight in armor that glowed a faint purple, with a sword as long as the knight was tall strapped across its back. For a moment, Adam thought the knight was something like nine feet in height, but...no, that had to be an illusion of some sort. The ceiling didn't even go that high.

The second figure was more bestial: a black-furred lion with eagle's wings, sitting next to Dana with a glint in its eye that appeared just intelligent enough to prove that the creature was not merely an unthinking beast. And the third figure stood near Judy; a tall, dark-haired woman whose head bore three faces instead of one, wearing long white robes and holding a large, ornate silver key as though it were a club.

"I'm guessing these are Persona, then?" Adam said. Somehow, he couldn't stop himself from accepting the situation at face value. At some level, he was certain, all of this was impossible. The stone door, the bleeding walls, the weird monsters...but whether or not it was indeed fake, he was being swept along by a power he could not halt. The fire would have to burn itself out before Adam could truly let himself contemplate what it had consumed.

"Well, they aren't cats," Judy said. "Except for Dana's, I suppose." The other girl gave Judy an irritated expression that somehow managed to combine eye-rolling with a glare. "Anyway, we'd better get out there and try to contain whatever panic is going on with the students."

"Grab your masks," Harold said, a butterfly-shaped mask already across his face. "And cover up that T-shirt, Dana. It's too recognizable."

"You really want to turn us into a pack of superheroes, don't you?" Dana asked, although she was retrieving a matching mask from her backpack despite the complaint.

"No," Harold said. "I want us to not have to worry about our classes being interrupted by students asking us to use our powers to resolve their disputes. That's why I go by Monarch when I wear this mask."

"So you've got a codename, a secret identity, and superpowers. Face it, 'Monarch', Dana's right. You're..." Judy's voice came to a halt as she opened the door. "One of the only students not currently frozen in time."

Indeed, outside the classroom, a pair of students who would have been walking past, laughing at some unheard joke, were instead frozen like painted statues, their expressions too joyful for the tableau that surrounded them.

Harold's steps slowed, allowing Adam and Dana to catch up. "O...kay," Dana said. "That's certainly new."

"Why aren't we affected?" Adam asked.

"Most likely, it's because of our Persona," Dana said. "Although that doesn't appear to explain why you haven't been frozen as well."

"It could have something to do with the door," Harold said. "Whether or not Adam can summon a Persona, he is able to see it, just like the rest of us."

"Unless the door is an indicator," Dana added. "We might be looking at this the wrong way. The Persona ability and the ability to see the door may actually be caused by..."

"Can we please do this later?" Judy said. "As in, after the..."

The sound of an engine in the distance interrupted Judy.

"Good idea," Harold said. "That had to be the Shadows. Adam, can you get my bag? I've got something in there I might need. The rest of you, we're heading for the main entry. Stick together and move quickly."

Adam ducked away from the door and hurried to the far corner of the room, where a duffel bag made from black nylon sat on an orange plastic chair that had been pulled away from one of the computer desks. Something long and heavy shifted inside the bag as he picked it up and hurried back to the door just as the lion-like Persona made its way outside, leaving Adam to bring up the rear of the group.

"Here," Adam said, handing the bag to Harold, who pulled the zipper open and retrieved a sword. "Good," Harold said. "Dana, we won't be able to swing by the gymnasium to retrieve any archery equipment, so try to let Vapula fight the Shadows for you."

Adam blinked. "Seriously? You guys are..." He sighed. "Fine, whatever, I can freak out over this later. Should I just stay here, or..."

"No," Harold said. "Stay close, but try not to be seen. We can't protect you if you're..."

His reply was cut off by roaring engines, much closer this time. Adam looked up, and let out a shocked cry before throwing himself towards the right wall, barely fast enough to avoid the two Shadows that rolled through where he was standing only seconds ago. They were shaped like spiked wheels of iron, with a golden lion's-head mask in the center.

"Vapula, stop them!" Dana yelled as her Persona lept forward to meet one of the wheels, its jaws clamping down around one of the spikes. The wheel tried to spin away, but Vapula's rear paws pressed down against the floor of the hallway, forcing the sound of a struggling engine to rise from the wheel.

The other turned and began to charge towards Adam, but before he could dodge again, a blast of wind struck it from the side, slamming it against the wall hard enough to leave cracks. Hecate loomed above the fallen wheel, the silver key brandished in her right hand while the left pointed open-palmed towards the Shadow. "They're weak against wind!" Judy yelled. "Lure the wheels towards me!"

The wheel that Vapula held fast spun backwards suddenly, throwing the winged lion loose. Before anyone could react, it rolled away from the group, seizing the opportunity for egress. The other wheel tried to right itself, only for a new blast of wind to strike it. The wheel flew through the air in the direction of its companion, breaking apart into blackened motes of some caliginous material that faded into nothing before they could reach the floor.

"Should we follow it?" Dana asked.

"I'm not sure," Harold said. "But nothing happened when the one was destroyed, so odds are those aren't the only Shadows here. Which means that they're likely acting under orders."

"Do the Shadows even have that level of intelligence?" Judy asked. "They've barely been as smart as animals before."

"We have to assume the answer is 'yes'," Dana replied. "Better to overestimate their capabilities than underestimate them right now."

"We follow, then," Harold said. "But don't drop your guard. This may be an attempt to lure us into an ambush. And if that's the case, then whatever is behind the ambush is probably also behind what happened to the rest of the school."

"So it's an ambush we know is coming," Dana said as Vapula returned to her side. "I guess that's better than the alternative."

* * *

><p>The Wheel was all but trembling as it returned to the red figure's side.<p>

"Only one returns?" the figure said. "They are stronger than I suspected. No matter, they will still not be strong enough to stop us." Its eyes narrowed. "Did they pursue?"

The sound of an idling engine rose from the Wheel, a language that only the Shadows present could understand.

The figure chuckled, a gravelly sound that seemed to rise from the earth itself rather than any being's throat. "Excellent." Its voice rose. "We proceed to the main staircase. Take heart, for our mission shall soon reach its conclusion."

* * *

><p>"Well, we haven't been ambushed yet. That's something."<p>

Harold wasn't sure whether Judy's statement was an indicator that he should be more worried, or that she wasn't worried enough. After a moment of thought, he decided to assume it was both. "That doesn't mean we won't be," he said. "Be ready for the worst."

"You mean besides the whole school being frozen in time?" Adam asked. "What the hell do you people usually encounter? Cultists who worship the living embodiment of death itself?"

Dana blinked. "That's oddly specific."

Adam's shoulders lifted in a not-quite-shrug. "It was in a game I was playing the other day."

"Can we focus, please?" Judy said. "You two are going to..." Her voice stopped suddenly as the group reached the main hall of Westbrook Academy. In the greenish not-light, the banners that hung from the walls were unreadable, and the display cases on either side of the main doors held objects with indistinct shapes. The beings standing at the top of the large staircase in the center of the hall were recognizable, though: Shadows of all shapes and kinds. Some were like the wheels that had attacked earlier, while still more were the masked blobs that had been fought previously. Others were in the shape of tables, or muscular men, or disembodied hands, or any number of things.

Standing in front of them all, though, was a red figure with white, batlike wings extending from its back. It was human-shaped, at least somewhat, with angular armor plating roughly in the shape of a semicircle along its too-long purple arms. From the back of its scaled legs protruded six white tentacles, which were at least for the moment mercifully still. Its head could only be described as demonic, with long red horns protruding from either side of its head. It wore a theater mask that seemed to shift from black to white depending on the angle, although the mask did nothing to hide either its long chin or the additional pair of red horns that extended from it.

The figure looked towards the four students and the three Persona, and let out a low laugh. "Just as I expected, the prey has sought out the predator. It is good to see that my servant's sacrifice was not in vain." It stepped forward, and although the mask made it impossible to tell, Adam was certain that the figure grinned. "Behold, mortals," it said as it made a grand sweeping gesture with its right arm. "You stand in the presence of Ahriman."

As unfamiliar as he was, Adam could still tell that his companions were caught very much off-guard by the strange Shadow and its bold proclamation. Dana was the first to speak. "You're...not like the others."

"Indeed," Ahriman said. "My servants, although certainly loyal, are...lesser entities. Make no mistake, however. I am a Shadow...the true self. His true self."

"Whose true self?" Harold asked.

Ahriman laughed again, although the tone was one of genuine amusement rather than cold mockery. "You do not know? Has Philemon truly kept you in the dark? Tch...I suppose I should not be surprised. Truth has long been the tyrant's greatest foe, and mark my words: your master is the greatest tyrant in the history of the human species."

Dana exhaled sharply as Vapula growled. "Last I knew, Philemon wasn't the one naming himself after the incarnation of evil."

Ahriman shook its head. "You truly are blind. It is almost a pity that I will be unable to open your eyes. But the one I serve has commanded that you perish, and I have no wish to disappoint him." It held out its right hand, black motes coalescing into the shape of a sword. Unlike Harold's, the black blade wielded by Ahriman was a simple one, with a narrow blade and triangular tip. "Make peace with your god while you still have the chance."

Marduk charged forward, its sword held low and to the side. Several Shadows leaped past Ahriman, but Marduk's blade swept upward and cleaved them in two. Unfortunately, this left an opening which Ahriman was easily able to exploit, its black sword slicing upward and sending the Persona's blade out of its hands, flying to the right and landing mere inches away from where Adam was crouched.

Ahriman delivered a kick to Marduk's chest, sending the Persona staggering backwards. A pair of tentacles lashed forward and wrapped themselves around Marduk's legs, turning the stagger into a tumble down the stairs. "Pathetic," the Shadow said as it strode down the stairs. "Weak and pathetic. How you have endured this long is truly beyond my comprehension."

Judy screamed in fury, and Hecate responded in kind, her left hand striking outward as she summoned the same blast of wind that had so grievously harmed the wheels earlier. Yet Ahriman did not show the same weakness; the wind swept straight past as though the Shadow was not even there. Hecate swing her silver key at Ahriman, only to have it parried by the black sword.

"Now!" Dana yelled, and Vapula leapt from Ahriman's left side, its jaws crackling with lightning as the Persona-beast bit down on the Shadow's right wing. A snarl rose from Ahriman's throat, and one of the hand-shaped Shadows leapt towards Vapula. The winged lion's position left it unable to dodge, and the Shadow's fingers were soon clenched tightly around Vapula's chest. The Persona whined faintly, but did not release its grasp until Ahriman flung itself towards one of the display cases. The sound of crashing glass filled the room, but the force was enough to dislodge Vapula's teeth. The Persona was thrown free, crashing into Hecate and sending both to the ground.

"I had truly hoped for worthy opponents," Ahriman said, slowly and purposefully walking towards Harold. The student drew his sword and dropped into a defensive stance, but Ahriman did not waver even slightly. "But then, I suppose that you had hoped to survive these events. It would seem neither of us shall get what we want this day."

The black sword flashed, too fast for Harold to properly parry. His blade flew out of his grasp, landing a foot away. "Farewell, Harold Westbrook," Ahriman said. It raised the black sword for the killing blow. Adam tried to scream something...a warning, maybe, or a plea. He wasn't certain of anything, save that there were words that needed to leap from his throat.

But before Adam could speak, a black void engulfed him.

* * *

><p>The void lasted for maybe an instant before changing to a new color: blue. A blue that Adam felt was far too familiar.<p>

It did not take long for him to realize why; the blue marble of the floor was still seared into his memory, as were the wooden benches facing a lectern that rose seamlessly from the floor. And neither could Adam forget the man who stood at the lectern: a short, elderly figure with a too-long nose and bulging, bloodshot eyes that were just as white as his hair.

Igor gestured, and the lectern melted into the floor. "Welcome to the Velvet Room, Adam Burton," he said. "It is good to see you again, for we still have...very important business to discuss."


	3. Thou Art I

Since I need something to pad out the start of each chapter so that it doesn't screw up the formatting on the epigraph, here's a completely pointless disclaimer containing information that should surprise nobody: all the SMT Persona stuff in this belongs to Atlus, I'm not trying to steal it and make my own game or anything, etcetera etcetera.

* * *

><p><em>"...that you may know it for what it truly is."<br>__-Igor_

* * *

><p>For a moment, Adam was unable to speak. "What...where..." Then the events of the preceding seconds caught up to him, and he simply sighed. "Great. Because things weren't crazy enough already."<p>

"I suppose it would be rude for me to act as though I was unfamiliar with the events you have experienced," Igor said. "Yet I must be certain: do you recall our previous conversation?"

"Is this a joke?" Adam said. "Harold's probably dead by..."

"He remains alive, young one," Igor interrupted. "The clock has been stopped twice over; so long as you remain present in the Velvet Room, time will not pass even within the Shadow Hour."

"The what?"

Igor smiled. "The environment in which your new friends have been forced into battle with Ahriman. Sadly, it is a battle they will soon lose. You have seen as much yourself; Ahriman's power is too great for your friends as they are."

Adam frowned. "I'm guessing that's why I'm here, then. You want me to sign that contract you talked about earlier, and in return, you'll keep them alive."

"Not precisely," Igor said. "But the contract will make it possible for them to survive. The power to save your friends sleeps inside you even now. I can teach you how to awaken it; to touch the vast sea that lurks within and around all of humanity, and in so doing draw upon it."

"So long as I sign the contract."

Igor nodded. "There is a price, as there is with all things. Choose to take the left fork in a road, and the cost is whatever lay down the right fork. Accepting the power to save your friends will have consequences. It will set you down a path which has long been ordained, a path that will allow you to shape your world's future into what you desire. I cannot permit you to wield such power if you are unable to accept what it means to do so."

"Seems kind of like you're cheating, though," Adam said. "I mean, if I don't sign the contract, it's pretty obvious that I'm going to die. I don't have much of a choice in the matter."

It was Igor's turn to frown. "There is always a choice, young one. Even in matters of life or death, you can always choose the latter. It may be an undesirable choice, but this does not mean that it is not a choice."

"No, in this case, that's exactly what it means," Adam said. "If I were to die because I refused to kill someone else, nobody in their right mind would call it suicide. You can't just say 'he had a choice' when the other option is death."

"But in that very situation," Igor said, "you are choosing who is to live and who is to die. And not all will choose that the other should die, nor will all choose that they themselves should die."

"And you see no difference between that and choosing between 'four people die' or 'four people live'?"

"Four people die, or an intelligent Shadow dies," Igor responded. "You are still choosing who lives and who dies. If you cannot accept this burden, I cannot grant you the power to save your friends."

"Fine. Just...just give me a moment," Adam said, sighing faintly. _Igor's wrong. I really don't have a choice. Nobody in my situation would. I can't just lie down and die, not when I can stand and fight._ "Death may yet come to claim me one day," he said at last. "But it will not be this day. Give me the contract."

Igor passed a piece of paper to Adam, along with a red-feathered quill pen. He took the paper and the pen, and signed the bottom. "What happens now?"

"What was always meant to happen," Igor said as he took the pen and paper back. He raised his right hand to Adam's cheek. "I will show you the mask which you have so long worn, that you may know it for what it truly is."

Igor's hand pulled away, and a sudden flash of blue light forced Adam's eyes to close.

* * *

><p>When Adam's eyes opened again, he was no longer in the Velvet Room.<p>

He stood once again in the green-lit main hall of Westbrook Academy. Harold was facing away from him and towards Ahriman, the Shadow's sword sword about to cleave through his chest just as it was before Igor's not-quite-intervention. He opened his mouth, ready to try to scream that uncertain warning once again; but instead, something new rose from his throat. A single word that cried out to be freed from its chains, to be spoken and thus released.

He couldn't stop himself. The word was very nearly a choked whisper, as though each syllable had to fight its way to his tongue. But the word was spoken nevertheless.

"Per...so...na..."

A blinding white light engulfed Adam Burton as time began to return to, if not normal, at least to whatever state permitted the four students to move about. Ahriman growled in frustration, the appearance of the light just enough of an irritant to delay the killing blow for a few precious seconds. Judy's eyes narrowed as she turned her head away out of reflex, while Dana lowered her gaze and covered her brow just enough to keep the light from causing serious harm. Harold, for his part, merely smiled.

_I am thou. Thou art I._

Adam wasn't sure where the words were coming from, or if they were coming from anywhere at all. They were directed towards him, though, and him alone: of that much, at least, he was absolutely certain.

_From the sea of thy soul, I come._

The light that surrounded him began to take on a shape, a humanlike figure interposing itself between Ahriman and Harold. The Shadow's blade struck the figure of light, and a metallic ring filled the air as the weapon was deflected away.

_I am the light of tomorrow's hopes, the protector born of the sun._

Ahriman snarled something impossible to understand, and the remaining Shadows that stood at its back charged as one towards the glowing figure. Its right arm swept forward, and each and every one of the Shadows burst into pure white flame.

_I am Talos. And my power is thine._

And for the first time in its memory, Ahriman knew fear.

The Shadow turned to run, but before it could make it two steps, the glowing figure pointed forward. A lance of incandescent fire leaped forward from the outstretched finger, piercing Ahriman's back and emerging from its chest. For a brief instant, the figure's shape was different, covered in blocky armor that seemed to press upon the sides of its head. Then the instant passed, the figure regained its previous shape, and Ahriman exploded into motes of black.

The light shining from the figure began to dim, revealing its true form: an animate bronze statue of a man in ancient Greek armor, holding a spear in its right hand. The statue raised the spear before striking the butt of it against the floor, then vanished.

"Well," Harold said, turning from the spectacle to face Adam. "That was..."

"What the hell was that?" Adam yelled before Harold could finish.

"Your Persona, I would assume," Dana said. "Although I never imagined that one with such strength could..."

"Ahriman never saw it coming," Judy added. "Kind of wish we could have interrogated a talking Shadow, though, or at least kept it talking longer before it actually attacked us. We probably could have learned a few things about certain topics that Philemon keeps trying to avoid about whenever we meet with him."

"And who exactly is Philemon anyway?" Adam said.

The others turned as one to face Adam, shocked expressions visible once again on their faces. "You understood her that time?" Harold said. "Then, the door..."

The greenish illumination flickered, and those students who remained frozen in time began to move, although nearly too slowly to perceive.

"Get rid of your Personas, now!" Harold yelled, reaching to pull his mask free. The others did the same as Marduk, Vapula, and Hecate glowed faintly before disappearing from sight. Harold ran for his sword, shoving it back into his duffel bag just as the greenish not-light was replaced with ordinary light, and the rest of the school returned to the ordinary flow of time once again.

A small pack of students near the broken display case stopped suddenly and began to talk, although Adam could only hear snatches of their conversation. "When did..." "...have sworn that was in..." "...too, but I guess..." "...we don't get..."

"I think we're clear," Judy said. "At least, nobody's screaming about monsters or anything. Let's get back to the door. If you can understand us when we mention Philemon, then you might actually be able to actually go through it now."

* * *

><p>He sat on a throne, in and before the darkness, and screamed.<p>

The scream that rose from the bat-winged entity who sat upon the throne was not one of pain, although it had some resemblance. Nor was it a scream of shock, though this was present as well. It was a scream of anger, of rage at a great wrong that had been inflicted upon him. The scream echoed in the darkness, and only when it had faded did he speak.

"Ahriman has fallen."

The four figures that surrounded the throne and its figure spoke, if such a term could be applied to whatever language they used within the darkness.

"Philemon's newest champion. It would appear that he is stronger than I had suspected. And the power he commands...it has grown rare in recent years, but those who command it have performed deeds of great import." A low rumbling rose from the figure atop the throne. "I may yet be forced to risk the consequences of an open assault." It paused. "Fortunately, Ahriman's defeat was not in vain. Having so many of my servants present was enough for me to confirm what I suspected about Westbrook Academy."

If the figure could smile, its tone of voice made it clear that it would indeed be doing so. "The power I seek has indeed been hidden within those walls. And it is only a matter of time before it becomes mine to command."

* * *

><p>The walk back to the study hall which housed the strange stone door seemed to take longer than the walk to the main entryway. Perhaps because it technically was taking longer, Adam thought to himself; after all, time was no longer frozen in the green not-light. Or maybe it was the cooldown from the adrenaline and the strange events; the need to focus on what was happening then and there might have prevented a more accurate assessment. Or maybe it was entirely imagined. After all, Adam never had been good with estimating how long something would take.<p>

Regardless of the truth, the group was silent as they made their way back. This, at least, made sense to Adam: Harold was quite clear regarding his concerns about what would happen should their abilities become public knowledge. No doubt any actual attempts at discussion would be shut down forcefully, at least until they were no longer in earshot of other students.

Indeed, once they had returned to the otherwise-vacant hall and closed the door, the other members of his group began to speak. "I couldn't have imagined that anyone could have a Persona that strong," Judy said as she made her way through the tables and chairs, the others close behind. "But how could you be capable of it when..."

"Philemon did refer to him as a champion," Harold said. "If you want to ask him why, well, this is going to be as good a time as any."

"Assuming he doesn't just wave it off by saying something about forbidden knowledge," Dana replied. "Like he does every other time we tried to get any detailed information out of him. It's like talking to a..." She stopped as the group of four students reached the stone door. "Well, it's like talking to something." She pressed her hand to the door, and with a grinding noise, it slowly began to swing open. From where he stood, Adam could only make out a white stone floor lit solely by the fluorescent lighting of the study hall. "Shall we?"

Judy bent over slightly as she passed through the doorway, followed by Harold. Adam stepped forward, hesitantly, still half-expecting to he sent staggering backwards as before. Yet this did not happen: his feet passed from carpet to marble as he stepped into the darkness, Dana close behind. The door slammed shut as she passed through.

It took a moment for Adam's eyes to adjust to the darkness, but it was not nearly so long a moment as he had expected. He could not see any light source, but a black marble table was plainly visible in the center of the strange room, across from which stood a young man facing away from the group. He wore a black shirt and pants, with long brown hair tied back into a ponytail. "There are four of you this time," he said in an eerily calm voice. "Your champion has awakened to his potential."

"It's good to see you too, Philemon," Judy said, her words too dry to be interpreted as sincere. "A day where we fight Shadows who actually talk just isn't complete without meeting with a guy in a butterfly mask who keeps telling us that we seek forbidden knowledge."

The man in the black clothes turned around at that statement. He wore a butterfly mask that seemed a perfect match to those held by Harold, Judy and Dana. "That you feel the need to resort to sarcasm betrays your impatience," Philemon said. "Still, it is not unexpected that your encounter with Ahriman has raised several new questions."

"Such as what exactly that Shadow really was," Harold said, the four students already standing in what would be a semicircle around the table had it been round rather than rectangular. "And how Adam was able to kill it that fast. I've never seen anything like it before."

"Impatience was Ahriman's undoing," Philemon said. "As it has been with so many others. Had the assault been delayed until after the moon rose, the invading forces would have been stronger, as would have Ahriman. Instead, a Shadow Hour was created, allowing the invasion to occur unseen by any without your abilities. The Shadows escalated the conflict, and thus I responded in kind." He turned to face Adam. "It was by my will that Talos was permitted to wield a greater power. So long as..." Philemon trailed off. "Well, suffice to say that you should not expect me to intervene in that manner again."

"So long as what?" Adam asked, to which Dana rolled her eyes. "Here we go," she muttered.

Philemon frowned. "I cannot answer your question without revealing..."

"Forbidden knowledge," Judy said bitterly, interrupting Philemon. "Seriously? We would have gotten killed if not for whatever you did with Adam's Persona, and you're still not going to tell us why?" She grimaced. "You may not be a tyrant, but Ahriman was right about one thing: the truth really is your greatest foe."

Philemon's eyes seemed to widen, and for the first time that any of the four students present could remember, emotion entered his voice. Apprehension, perhaps, or anger. It was not entirely clear. "What were Ahriman's precise words?"

"You know we're not going to remember them accurately now," Dana said. "He called you the greatest tyrant humanity has ever known, though, that much I'm sure of. Kind of seems like a ridiculous thing to say, though, given the obvious."

"And he spoke of a master that he served," Harold added. "A master who wanted us dead."

"I see." Philemon's voice was calm again, the shift sending a shiver down Adam's spine for some unknown reason. "Then there is knowledge that is no longer forbidden. I shall tell you of Ahriman's master. A counterpart to myself, against whom I once struggled fiercely enough to transform this world and beyond. And so I gathered allies; Persona wielders like yourselves. And in the end, he was defeated. Destroying him, however, was something impossible. Ahriman's master is the embodiment of an archetype bound deep within the collective soul of humanity, and so long as that archetype exists, Nyarlathotep will always endure and be reborn."

Dana blinked. "Nyarlathotep? You're not talking about the guy from the Cthulhu stories, are you?"

Philemon smiled. "Not precisely. Nyarlathotep was not always his name. As I said, he is the embodiment of an archetype. The evil that he represents has worn many faces and had many names over the years. Which is fitting, I suppose, given the identity that he has now taken."

"And what exactly is he after?" Adam asked.

"Simply put," Philemon said, "chaos. Nyarlathotep is evil made manifest. Every emotion that your species denies, every urge you seek to repress, everything that you will not permit yourself to be: these are what feed Nyarlathotep, and what give strength to his armies."

"Shadows," Dana said. "Well, that explains the name, at least."

"What I don't get is why you won't actually fight him," Judy said. "If he's that much of a threat to us, why are you hiding in whatever this place is rather than actually kicking his ass?"

"No, that much I think I understand," Dana said. "Stop me if I get this wrong, Philemon. You and Nyarlathotep are fighting over something important, to us as well as you. The problem is, if you put too much strength into the fight, you'll end up destroying the prize. You can't battle openly and with all your power, so you use us as proxies much like Nyarlathotep uses his Shadows. That way, the battle won't escalate to a level where neither of you will get what you want. Sort of a mutually assured destruction thing, only with monsters instead of nuclear weapons."

Harold and Judy turned towards Dana with widened eyes. "How the...how did you figure that out?" Judy asked.

Dana shrugged. "It's kind of obvious if you look at what Philemon has said."

"How the hell is any of that 'obvious'? I mean, the part about us being proxies, yes, but..."

Philemon raised his hand, palm outward, and the two girls fell silent. "Dana's assessment is a...reasonable analogy, yes," he said. "It is not wholly accurate, but the errors are in many ways trivial ones, with no meaningful impact on the conclusion she has reached."

"So," Harold said. "What now? I can't imagine Nyarlathotep or...that name is not going to be fun to keep saying. Anyway, doubt he'll take Ahriman's defeat lying down. Should we be preparing for something else, or..."

"I am not yet certain what schemes he will set in motion," Philemon replied. "For now, I can only suggest that you be vigilant. It is extremely unlikely that Ahriman was his most powerful servant. There will be others."

"Well, I guess that's about all we're getting out of Captain Butterfly today," Judy said. "Let's go. My free period ends in like ten minutes." She turned and began to walk to where the door once stood, Dana and Harold close behind. Adam moved to follow, but the touch of a gloved hand on his shoulder stopped him before he could move.

"I would ask that you not leave just yet," Philemon said as he circled to Adam's front. "An associate of mine wishes to speak with you."

"You have associates?"

"That is, I suppose, one word that can be used to describe me," came a familiar voice from behind the youth. He turned around, and saw Igor emerge from the shadows.

* * *

><p>"Igor?" Adam said. "I thought...this isn't the Velvet Room, is it?"<p>

"No," Igor said. "But it is a place of similar design, and created by the same individual." He gestured to Philemon. "Time is folded upon itself here; despite Judy's protests, she would have had those ten minutes whether or not she had remained."

"Like the Shadow Hour?"

"It is a similar power," Philemon said. "Drawn from much the same wellspring. Your power, on the other hand, is of a different nature."

"I referred to Talos earlier as the mask you had so long worn," Igor said. "But Talos is not the only mask that you have worn, nor the only mask that you can wear."

"The Shadows commanded by Nyarlathotep are fragments of humanity's darkest desires," Philemon added. "When you defeat them, you will be able to...comprehend some part of the individual from whom that desire rose."

"Their masks can become your own," Igor said. "And through this you will gain the ability to summon other Personas. They will be weak at first, but you can strengthen them."

"Your ties to the rest of humanity will help you in this," Philemon said. "These connections...links, if you will...can aid you in comprehending the nature of others, and thus aid you in strengthening those Personas that you call forth."

"Simply put," Igor said, "by spending time connecting with others, the links will grow. And as they grow, you will be able to draw upon greater power when you claim your new masks."

"You mean new Persona?" Adam asked.

"Precisely," Igor replied. "Although these battles are not the only means by which you can obtain these masks. I have the ability to fuse Personas together, bringing forth something new. It is a power that you will doubtlessly find necessary, if you are to stand against Nyarlathotep."

"Should you need to seek out Igor for this task," Philemon said, "you need only concentrate on the Velvet Room when opening the stone door. It will bring you there, just as it has brought you here."

Adam exhaled slowly. "This is a lot to take in."

"You will have time," Igor said. "For now, I suggest that you speak with your new friends. Although they do not share this power, they do have the benefit of experience when it comes to understanding Shadows."

"Farewell, Adam Burton," Philemon said. "For now, anyway."

Adam turned around, and saw the stone door standing open, a yellowish glow emerging from the opening. "Well, I'll see you around, apparently," he said, and stepped through.

* * *

><p>The others had barely gotten more than two steps away from the school-side of the door before Adam emerged from its depths.<p>

_I guess Igor was telling the truth about the way time works in there_, he thought to himself before opening his mouth to speak. "Is...that how these things always go?"

"Not always," Judy said. "Usually Philemon's even more vague and evasive. That whole thing about Nyarlathotep? That was the most informative he's been since I met him."

"When was that, anyway?" Adam asked.

"About a month and a half ago," Judy said.

"I found the door two months ago," Harold added. "And Dana came across it a week after Judy." He paused. "You seem rather less disconcerted than any of us did after we went through that door for the first time."

"What do you mean?" Adam asked.

"You didn't..." Dana started to say. "No, I guess not. Each of us...we encountered something when we opened it. A version of ourselves that..." She stopped. "It was unpleasant, and I'd rather not go into much detail about it. I don't know how you managed to avoid that encounter, but frankly, I'm a bit jealous."

Adam frowned. "You didn't get a lecture from a weird old guy about a contract and the price you had to pay for the power, then?"

Harold shook his head. "No. I think I can safely assume that you're the only one of us who had that happen." He pressed his right hand to his forehead and sighed. "And I guarantee you that if we asked Philemon about it, he'd go right back into one of his forbidden knowledge monologues."

"Well, now that we've made things even more confusing than they were before," Judy said, "why don't we just figure out what our plans for for any more Shadows so that I can get to class on time?"

"Hopefully, there won't be any tonight," Harold said. "From what Philemon said, it sounded like the ones that would be out there tonight were part of Ahriman's attack. Still, just in case we do get some stragglers, Dana and I can do some patrols. We'll text the two of you if we see something we can't handle." He paused. "Actually, I don't have your number, do I, Adam?"

Adam shook his head.

"I'll have to take care of that before we leave, then," Harold said. "I guess if nothing else comes up, then I'll see the rest of you outside the door at noon tomorrow. Adam should have his class schedule by then, so that'll help with planning our later meetings."

"So we'll meet back here, then?" Adam asked.

"No," Dana said. "The door moves around. Every midnight, it jumps somewhere else. We've figured out everywhere it goes, though." She reached for her phone. "I've got the list here somewhere...if I recall correctly, there are twenty-two different locations that the door cycles through. In other words, come the 30th, it'll be back in this study hall."

"And tomorrow?"

"Ms. Lacey's classroom, it seems," Dana said after a few taps. "She's one of the math teachers. Second floor, northern wing of the school. There's a map on the school's website if you get lost."

"Alright," Adam said. "Guess that's when I'll be talking to most of you next. Although I have to say, before we go...this was certainly not what I expected from my first day at school."

Harold began to laugh; a quiet laugh of genuine amusement, that soon had Judy and Dana joining in. "No," he said after a few seconds. "No, I guess it wouldn't have been. But it's good to know that you'll be with us on this." He paused. "I still need your phone number, by the way."

Adam smiled. "Right. Almost forgot."

* * *

><p><em>I am thou...<em>

_Thou art I..._

_Thou shalt be empowered when creating a Persona of the Fool Arcana..._

* * *

><p>He knelt in a darkened room, and spoke to his master.<p>

The small room in which he knelt was hardly the ideal place for such communication. Even though his master had no physical form, the hardness of the floor made it a very uncomfortable place to kneel. He had considered sewing padding into the brown hooded robes that he wore, but had never gotten around to it. He doubted his master would care; it was not as though he required any specific attire. His master did not even require that he kneel. Still, as with the robes, it felt appropriate to do so.

"No, milord. I examined the seals personally, and there were no signs of an attempt. The creation of a Shadow Hour did not result in the vaults being breached."

His master spoke, in a voice that none could hear. Not even himself. Still, the meaning of the words was clear enough.

"I have done what I could to explain away the damage done by the fight with Ahriman. There should be no questions asked; frankly, the students were just happy that they weren't taking the blame for it."

He frowned at his master's next question. "It is possible, yes. Especially if as many Shadows were present as you claim. Still, the precise location of the vaults should still remain unknown to him. Once the moon begins to wane, I can..."

He grimaced as his master's desires entered his mind.

"Milord, that...will not be an easy task to accomplish without aid. It would be far easier were I permitted to reveal myself to Harold and his circle of wielders. Now that Adam has joined them, they are far more..."

He fell silent as his master spoke.

"Very well. If the ordained path requires that I remain silent, then I shall do so. Thy will shall be done, Lord Philemon."


	4. School Days

Since I need something to pad out the start of each chapter so that it doesn't screw up the formatting on the epigraph, here's a completely pointless disclaimer containing information that should surprise nobody: all the SMT Persona stuff in this belongs to Atlus, I'm not trying to steal it and make my own game or anything, etcetera etcetera.

* * *

><p><em>"Why here? Why us?"<br>__-Judy Keene_

* * *

><p><em>September 10, 2014<em>

"And after that, I've got a world history class with...no, wait, that's after lunch."

When Adam had woken up that morning, he was almost certain that he had dreamt the events of the previous day. The stone door, the bronze statue, Igor, Philemon, the Shadow Hour...unfortunately, it had not taken him long to discover otherwise. Just inside the door to his dorm room had been a package wrapped in brown paper and string, containing a white mask shaped like a butterfly and the note "From our mutual friend. -H". And a new app had appeared on his phone, labeled "Persona", with an icon of an expressionless mask split vertically between black and white. Adam had not yet opened the app, and had in fact convinced himself not to until he was able to speak with the others at noon.

Compared to the discovery that the events had indeed taken place, trying to figure out where his classes were and how to get to each room was calming. It felt real, in a way that Personas and Shadows still did not.

"Here we are. Looks like I've got statistics instead, then lunch." He stopped. "Great. So I'm going to have run all the way from Ms. Lacey's classroom to the far end of the east wing, and then all the way back to meet up with everyone. Well, at least that combination probably won't happen very often."

Adam set the sheet of paper back down on the desk he sat at, and stood up. The dorm room he had been assigned was small, and rather plain; presumably the intent was for the resident to decorate it as they felt appropriate, but given his recent arrival he had not yet had the time to do so. Instead, the walls and ceiling were a simple and unadorned beige, marred only by circular recessed lighting and a black switch on the wall. There was enough room for his bed, the desk, a dresser, and some shelves that were currently empty save for a copy of the school handbook and a charger for Adam's phone. The desk, at least, was more crowded; besides his class schedule and several boxes that yet remained unpacked, it held a large messenger bag and a desktop computer that the school had provided.

_I should get to the cafeteria_, Adam thought to himself before reaching for the messenger bag. _It'll leave me that much closer to my literature class. Plus, breakfast._ His stomach rumbled at the thought. _Yeah, cafeteria's starting to seem like a good idea._

* * *

><p>Adam did not expect the cafeteria to be quite so crowded when he arrived. <em>Then again<em>, he thought to himself, glancing at a digital clock on the wall, _I suppose it is still a bit under half an hour before the first classes start._

The cafeteria was not too unlike that of his old school; long faux-wood tables and benches arranged in rows, with an east window wall that made visible the woods that surrounded the Academy, held back by little more than a black-painted metal fence. The sun had risen recently enough that light streamed through the trees, making the fluorescent fixtures set into the ceiling little more than a formality. And near the doors he had just entered, a salad bar had been repurposed as a breakfast buffet table; the traditional containers of lettuce, miscellaneous vegetables, and dressing replaced with oatmeal, various cereals, and a basket of pancakes that lay next to narrow bins of syrup and what appeared to be grape jelly. One of the kitchen staff stood nearby - as much to keep an eye on the students as on the amount of food remaining, Adam suspected. She wore a wore a no-longer-white apron over a set of dark gray food service scrubs, and although the wrinkles on her face and the pale streaks in her shoulder-length, copper-red hair marked her as being on the back half of middle age, her blue eyes still seemed as sharp as they had ever been.

The line at the salad-slash-breakfast bar was short enough that Adam was able to slide in without much difficulty, and after obtaining a plate with several syrup-coated pancakes and a small carton of orange juice, Adam realized that he found himself facing another comfortably familiar worry: deciding at what table to sit. From what he remembered of the previous day, it seemed the faculty had a whole thing going about not wanting the cliques that so often formed in large groups, even more so than that of most schools did (and certainly more so than his old one seemed to). _Then again, I've seen firsthand that there's not always a lot of overlap between what the people with power want, and what the people without it want._

A shout from a nearby table over shook Adam from his moment of reflection. "Hey, new guy!" He glanced around, and saw a young man with loose blond hair and a visible tan waving at him. "Heard there was someone who just got here this week. C'mon, there's a free spot here."

_Guess that answers the question for me_, Adam thought to himself before making his way to the student who had called him over. "Didn't know I'd become the focus of gossip so soon," he said as he swung his legs over the bench and settled in to the other student's right, taking care not to kick the girl who was now sitting to Adam's right. She glanced from her bowl of oatmeal towards Adam, then turned her gaze back towards a textbook that lay to the right of the bowl.

"Not often we get someone new showing up after the first day, even this early into the year," the other student replied before offering a hand. "I'm Michael. Hall." He paused. "Wait, crap. I wanted to do a James Bond thing with the intro, but I messed up. Can I try again?"

"No, but I'll pretend you got it right," Adam said, smiling as he took the proffered hand. "The name is Burton," he said, adopting as much of a faux-British accent as the words permitted. "Adam Burton."

"Damn you," Michael said, but chuckled and shook Adam's hand. "Anyway, like I said, usually all the new students show up on day one. If a dorm room gets filled later than that, word spreads. And given the blank look on your face..."

"I did not have a blank look," Adam protested, only to be ignored by Michael. "...after you got your pancakes, I figured you were the new arrival." He frowned slightly, almost imperceptibly. "And since I've been the awkward new kid more than once before, I figured I'd spare you as much of the uncertainty as I could."

Adam blinked. "Well, thanks, I guess." He picked up his fork and knife, and began to separate a piece of pancake from the stack. "Did your parents move around a lot?"

"Something like that," Michael said. "It's complicated, and it'd take a lot longer to explain than one breakfast. What about yours?"

"They're dead," Adam said, frowning. "Car accident."

"Oh," Michael replied. "Sorry to drag that back up. But, was that..."

"It was a few months ago," Adam said, sighing. "The delay was because of a scare my aunt had a couple weeks ago over a doctor's visit. Fortunately, it turned out to be a mistake in some test or another, but it kind of threw off the timing on my arrival. So, you know, it could be worse."

"Trust me on this," Michael said. "I've long since learned never to say 'it could be worse'. It's like you're begging the universe to prove you right." He frowns, then slides his now-empty plate to the side and reaches for his bag. "Let's change the subject. What classes do you have today?"

"If I remember the schedule correctly," Adam said, "I've got literature, then philosophy, then statistics. Did not expect to encounter the second one, to be honest."

"It'll probably be with Redcliffe," Michael says as he searches through his bag. "He's actually pretty good at the whole 'making class interesting' thing. Ah, here we are." He pulls out a sheet of paper and shows it to Adam. "Any of these match up with yours? I need to get going soon, but it might be nice to talk again later."

Adam looks through the list. "Yeah, think I've got that biology class on the same spot in my schedule. Hopefully I'll be able to figure out how to get there."

Michael chuckles and stands up, sliding the paper back in. "Don't worry, it doesn't take long to figure out the layout of this place. I guess I'll see you then."

* * *

><p><em>I am thou...<em>

_Thou art I..._

_Thou shalt be empowered when creating a Persona of the Magician Arcana..._

* * *

><p>The classroom used by Harry Redcliffe, teacher of philosophy and comparative theology, did not immediately strike Adam as being exceptionally different from any other classroom. There was a large wooden desk to the side of a long whiteboard, with several rows of student desks facing forward. There were no windows, although the walls were of an off-white paneling upon which were placed several bulletin boards and framed posters. The only true abnormality was that one of the posters was actually a reproduction of a rather strange painting.<p>

At first, it appeared to show an elderly man; a king, perhaps, wearing red and gold robes and a golden crown, who sat on a throne in what appeared to be a castle of some sort. A red cross had been painted onto the stone wall above the throne. Next to the throne, a dark-haired man in brown robes stood behind a lectern looking towards a third man, also in red and gold attire, who pointed accusingly at the first man. Looking closer, however, it was clear to Adam that the first man was in fact a corpse.

Adam had made a point to ask Redcliffe about the painting before class began, and was told that it portrayed "one of the more darkly amusing incidents in European history". The other students had begun to file in by then, however, preventing further inquiry. And after a quick roll call, the class had begun.

"Since we're about a week in already, I'll give Adam the short version of the speech." Redcliffe smiled slightly and raised a finger to slide a pair of rimless glasses further up the bridge of his nose. The teacher was a tall, clean-shaven man, with short blond hair and ice-blue eyes. He wore a black suit and tie, that even Adam could tell was far better tailored than any of the student uniforms. "It's been said that science answers the question of 'how', and religion answers the question of 'why'." Redcliffe paused, then turned towards the whiteboard and began to write something that, at least for the moment, the teacher's position prevented Adam from seeing. "I've never liked that saying. It's far too much of an oversimplification. Still, it serves its purpose, because philosophy doesn't seek to answer either of those questions. Instead, it teaches us what questions we should ask if we want the answers to make sense. After all, what point is there in asking from what source our morality originates if one cannot define 'morality' in the first place?"

He turned around to face the class again, although the words on the whiteboard remained obscured. "Which brings us back to where we were at yesterday. Since Adam wasn't here for it, I'm going to ask him a question so that I can get an idea of how much I'll need to do to get him caught up. The question of how to define morality has had three major answers over the years...three schools of thought, as it were." Redcliffe gestured to Adam, prompting the student to stand from his desk. "Which of those three schools holds that the morality of an act should be determined by its compatibility with pre-established ethical rules?"

Adam frowned. He hadn't had much time to do more than flip through a few pages of the textbook, and he only vaguely remembered those pages at the moment. "Honestly, Mr. Redcliffe," he said after a few seconds, "I have no idea."

"Well, it's early in the class period," Redcliffe responded, "so a refresher shouldn't be too much trouble. Go ahead and sit down. The answer was 'deontological ethics', by the way. The other two major schools are consequentialist ethics, which looks at the results of the act; and virtue ethics, which considers the character of the individual who commits the act rather than the act itself. Of course, in practice, most people determine morality via a mixture of these three rather than depending solely on one or another."

Adam sat back down, reached for a pencil and notebook, and began to take notes on the lecture.

* * *

><p>The others had already begun to talk when Adam made it to the classroom.<p>

For some reason, it seemed different with only the four of them inside than it had during his statistics class earlier. The desks were still in the same positions, the whiteboard still had all the same writing as before, the dark-stained wooden teacher's desk still had the same computer and scattered papers, and the windows still looked out over the same woods as before.

Dana, Judy, and Harold were near the far corner of the classroom, Harold standing and leaning against the wall while the other two sat sideways in desk chairs. The room was otherwise empty at the time, fortunately; the topics being discussed would hardly be simple to explain to other students.

"Philemon isn't sharing anything new," Harold said. "As usual. And given that the patrol last night was completely uneventful..." He trailed off.

"I'm not going to be the one to say it," Judy said. "I know better than to tempt fate like that."

Dana sighed. "Then I'll say something. The lull won't last forever. If Nyarlathotep really did send Ahriman here, then there was a reason. He could have just overwhelmed us with superior numbers if that was all he was after."

"Unless it was because of the Shadow Hour," Harold replied. "It may not have been possible to have created it without a stronger Shadow present, or at least one with the level of intelligence that Ahriman possessed."

"That's a good point," Dana said. She tilted her head downward, and rested her chin in the crook of her right thumb and forefinger. "Although it raises the question of whether impatience was the only reason for the Shadow Hour." Dana frowned. "We need more information before we can decide on our next move."

"But we can't get more information because Philemon has his whole 'I know all and tell nothing' thing going," Judy said. "It's like he gets some sick thrill out of lording his secrets over us. I mean, if it's something about him not trusting us, then why didn't..." She stopped suddenly. "Why didn't he find someone else."

"What do you mean?" Adam asked.

"Why here? Why us?" Judy stood from her chair and began to pace along the side of the room. "The Shadows aren't attacking the rest of the world, just the area around the school. The same school that has a teleporting stone doorway that only those with the power to summon a Persona can see. This can't be a coincidence."

"Plus, there's that thing about the 'ordained path' or whatever," Adam said.

"Which may explain why Philemon didn't find someone else," Dana said. "Although I'm not sure it answers the 'why here' part of your question, Judy. Still, that it was referred to as such carries implications of prophecy, which raises its own set of questions. Harold, you said that Philemon had told you of Adam's arrival, correct?"

"Not by name," Harold replied, "but yes, he did tell that a 'champion' would soon arrive at the school. When I learned of Adam, I suspected it would turn out to be him."

"And you're one of the scholarship students, correct?" Dana asked as she turned to face Adam, who nodded. "Given the lottery aspect of how they get handed out, that implies Philemon either does indeed have the ability to predict the future, or can influence our world in some manner." She paused. "But that still leaves unanswered the question of 'why here'. Since the rest of us obtained our Personas before Adam got here..." She frowned. "No, that's not necessarily relevant. Damn it, we're at the same place we were before. Too little information, and our only source for it likes to not answer questions. What we need is a way to tell the difference between the school being important to Philemon and the Shadows in and of itself, and it only being important because we're here."

"I'll see if I can dig up anything from the history of the school that might be relevant," Harold said. "Former students or faculty who did something that might be relevant, weird stuff that happened in the area. If there is something about the school that lured them, hopefully I'll be able to find it."

"Good thinking," Dana said. "Judy, you said you were trying to find out if anything like this has happened before, weren't you?"

"'Were' being the operative word there, but yes," she replied. "You'd be surprised how useless Google can be when trying to look up stuff about summoning deities and demons that actually has any sort of connection to reality." Judy muttered something under her breath that Adam thought sounded vaguely like 'skullcap' before continuing. "But after what Philemon said yesterday, I may as well give it another try."

"What should I be doing?" Adam asked. "I..." He paused. "Look, I barely know what's going on here, but from everything I've heard, it seems like something I really should be helping with."

"You know how to fight?" Harold said.

"...what?"

"Fencing? Archery? Half-remembered martial arts classes from when you were eight?"

Dana stood from her chair before Adam could respond to, or even process, Harold's questions. "Anything that'll give you a chance to fight the Shadows without needing to call out your Persona."

"I tried to learn boxing once," Adam said. "But against those things? Kind of seems like we'd be outclassed."

"They're not as tough as they look," Judy said, grinning. "A good punch to the face and they go down easily enough. Or whatever they might have under those masks instead of faces. Point is, you'll want to get those lessons going again."

"Alright," Adam said, a touch reluctantly. "Oh, one other thing. I assume you guys also got that 'Persona' app on your phones after you went through whatever you went through before you could summon yours?"

"The one that appeared suddenly and yet somehow doesn't show up in the list of installed apps?" Judy said. "Yeah, it's on ours too."

"It doesn't actually seem to do much of anything, though," Harold added. "I open it, and it just shows a blank screen. I'm guessing it has something to do with how our phones don't freak out when the Personas come out, but..."

"If it was just software, that wouldn't make sense," Judy interrupted. "A single app shouldn't be enough to keep sparks from flying out like that time those neon signs exploded."

"We're already operating outside of known physical laws, Judy," Dana said. "Still, it's more likely that the app is caused by whatever is protecting our phones, not the other way around." She frowned. "Yet another mystery for us to unravel, I suppose."

Adam glanced at his phone, and frowned. "Well, if there's nothing else, I need to get to my next class, and it's a bit of a walk. You guys mind if I head out?"

"Go ahead," Harold said. "We can meet up again tomorrow. You got the list of door locations, right?"

"Yeah," Adam replied with a nod. "The storage room near the main auditorium. See you then."

As he left the classroom, Adam felt his phone vibrate in his hand. He frowned, and tapped the screen. There, sitting in the recent notifications, was the icon from the Persona app, and the words "I would speak with you. -Igor".

Adam looked from his phone to the stone door that sat just outside the classroom, then pocketed his phone and reached out to touch the handle of the door.

* * *

><p>Despite what he had been promised by Philemon, the transition into the Velvet Room was not like that of moving from the school into whatever strange realm Adam's mysterious benefactor claimed as his own. Placing his hand upon the door had sent a cold shiver down Adam's spine, forcing his eyes closed; or would have if he was certain that in that moment he still had a physical body that could claim eyes or a spine.<p>

The sensation was brief, though, fading as swiftly as it had appeared. And instead of the hallway of Westbrook Academy, Adam stood in the blue marble domain of the strange man who called himself Igor.

"That was quite swift of you, Adam," Igor said, smiling. "Although, you were not far from the door's current location, so I am not entirely surprised."

"You said something about wanting to talk to me?"

"Indeed I did," Igor said, gesturing to one of the wooden benches that filled the room. "Please, have a seat. There is something I would ask you, and I suspect that finding the correct answer may take some time. I would not wish you to be uncomfortable."

His brow furrowed briefly, but Adam did sit down at the bench. Despite appearing to be made of wood, it was surprisingly comfortable, as though he found himself settling down into an overstuffed couch. He did not remember this from his previous visits to the Velvet Room; then again, the first had been a dream, and he had remained standing during the second. "Alright...go ahead."

Igor's expression was difficult to read. It wasn't quite a frown...trepidation, perhaps? Adam hadn't quite figured it out by the time Igor spoke. "What does it mean to be human?"

Adam blinked in surprise. "That's...a bit heavy. Why do you ask?"

"Despite my appearance," Igor said, "I am not actually human, any more than Philemon. I am...well, your language lacks the ability to properly describe my true nature. I am not a mere puppet, dancing on strings but otherwise still. Yet if I were commanded to act by Philemon, I would have no choice but to obey. I lack the...gift of free will, the birthright of your species."

"And...what, you want me to get Philemon to change that?"

"I want to understand why it drives you and yours," Igor replied, his voice growing wistful. "I did not always manage the Velvet Room on my own. I had assistants, once. Three siblings, if such a relationship can be said to exist for any whom Philemon has personally created. But one after another, they found themselves determined to answer that question. It consumed them, until at last they left this place in search of the answer, and I was left to maintain this place alone. Perhaps they will return one day, but thus far, they have not."

"And Philemon can't create new ones?" Adam shifted his legs slightly, not out of discomfort so much as nervousness. "Or does he not know?"

"My master knows quite well that my assistants have left this place," Igor said with a suddenly indignant tone. "He is not so lessened by..." He stopped suddenly, his expression very nearly one of shame. "I have overstepped my bounds. Forgive me, but I can speak no further on this subject."

The pause in the conversation lasted for several seconds before Adam spoke. "So, do you still need me to answer your question, or..."

"Perhaps...this is not the best time to pursue that answer," Igor said. "Do think on the question, though. If you find an answer you feel is acceptable, please seek me out. Until then, though, I bid you farewell."

Adam did not even have the opportunity to stand up from the bench before he found himself ejected back into the school hallway.

* * *

><p>"So, what does everyone usually get up to after classes end?"<p>

Adam Burton and Michael Hall had exited biology class at roughly the same time, the latter student having flagged down the former shortly after the bell rang. It was the last class of the day, and the push by the rest of the class to exit meant that they were unable to actually talk until after the room was all but clear.

"Honestly, there's not much to do," Michael said in response to Adam's question. "There's a Starbucks, another coffee place that's locally owned, and a brewery with a lot of experience picking out fake IDs. From what I hear, students usually just head down to Chicago for the weekend if they want to do anything interesting. Apparently trips get organized by some of the rich students."

"And the teachers allow that?" Adam asked.

"Officially, no." Michael glanced in either direction, in a manner too obvious for Adam to see it as anything but done for effect, before continuing in a sotto voice. "In practice, as long as all the students get a chance to go they tend to overlook it. Part of the whole social cohesion thing they keep trying to push, I guess."

"Well, good for them, but it's not the weekend yet, I'm pretty sure," Adam said as the pair moved past a staircase leading to the second floor. "Is there at least a movie theater around here?"

Michael nodded. "Yeah, but it's a single-screener, so showtimes are kind of limited. Although, they're giving Guardians of the Galaxy another run next week, though, so a few students are making plans to go. You interested?"

Adam smiled. "Sure, that sounds like a good chance to mingle. Text me when a time gets settled on."

* * *

><p>For several years, Keith Vanderwood's computer knowledge had been at a level others had referred to as "knows just enough to be dangerous". He was certainly not incompetent by any means, but he had often been derided by his parents and the school's IT staff for thinking he knew more than he actually did. He had ignored them both, of course, but it wasn't until his "tinkering" brought down his junior high's network for three days that he realized they were right.<p>

He had gotten better since coming to Westbrook Academy, of course. Now in his senior year, he felt his dreams of joining the Silicon Valley crowd were closer to attainable than ever before. But even in those days of overconfidence, Keith knew, he would have known that the way his computer now behaved was not at all how it should have been.

He had gotten two-thirds of a way through an essay that he had spent far too long procrastinating on when the screen went black. For a moment, he had thought that it had lost power, but the fans in the case continued to hum and the LED on the monitor continued to glow blue. His second thought was a virus, or some other form of malware.

It was a thought that had barely had time to form when white letters began to light up, one at a time, in a font that resembled formal script more than traditional typeface.

**WHAT IS IT YOU DESIRE MOST?**

Keith blinked, forcefully, several times in a row. When he was young, he had escaped more than one nightmare through such a method. But if it was indeed a sure pass from dreams to the waking world, then it seemed that he was already at that destination. The words remained on the screen, with a blinking cursor after the question mark that beckoned him to reply.

He closed his eyes once more and sighed. "Okay, whoever hijacked this, if you can hear me, very funny. Now give me back my paper."

Nothing changed.

"Fine." Keith frowned. "What I 'desire' is to get this assignment done."

**BUT WHAT IS IT THAT YOU DESIRE MOST?**

Keith froze. He knew he didn't have a webcam hooked up to the computer, and the headset he used when playing whatever first person shooter had become popular lately wasn't plugged in either. There was no way it should have been able to hear him.

Which meant there had to be someone else here who could.

"Alright, knock it off!" Keith yelled. "The joke's not funny anymore!"

The screen remained unchanged.

Keith found his gaze drawn back to the blinking cursor. The sensation of beckoning was only growing stronger.

"Power," he said, in a quiet voice. "The power to shape my future."

**AND WHAT DO YOU OFFER IN TRADE FOR THIS POWER?**

It was no longer possible for Keith to react in shock. He was speaking to someone...no, something else, something unconstrained by mere silicon. He did not know how he knew this, only that it was something he knew.

"I don't know. What would you ask of me?"

**A SERVICE.**

A chill washed over Keith's form as the words continued to appear on his screen.

**THE SERVANTS OF PHILEMON MUST NOT FIND THE GATES. KILL THEM.**

"I..."

**DO THIS, AND THE FUTURE SHALL BE YOURS.**

Keith glared at the monitor, his vague sense of awe and reverence replaced swiftly by anger. "The hell kind of joke is this? I'm not going to go killing random people!"

**SO BE IT.**

Keith began to stand up, and-

Keith glanced at the clock at the bottom corner of his screen, and frowned. _Did the time just jump ahead like three minutes? I should probably take a break from this paper._


	5. The Gate of Coins

_Since I need something to pad out the start of each chapter so that it doesn't screw up the formatting on the epigraph, here's a completely pointless disclaimer containing information that should surprise nobody: all the SMT Persona stuff in this belongs to Atlus, I'm not trying to steal it and make my own game or anything, etcetera etcetera._

* * *

><p><em>"There's a difference between 'destined' and 'decided'."<br>-Timothy Penzig_

* * *

><p><em>September 12, 2014<em>

Even if Adam hadn't truly begun to settle in yet, the days were slowly starting to feel routine. Thursday had gone by swiftly, as had the portion of Friday that consisted of classes. His meeting with the other Persona wielders yesterday had been called off, apparently due to a package Judy had received from home that turned out to contain food which was less than properly cooked; despite having promised to research whether events similar to their own had occurred elsewhere, her only contributions had been text messages that consisted primarily of expletives directed at the very concept of baking.

The text message Adam had received from Harold shortly after exiting biology that day was, by comparison, significantly less comprised of four-letter words: _Judy's feeling better; meeting in ten minutes. Gather up at the statue in the main plaza._

The statue, Adam remembered, was of Harold's great-grandfather and the founder of the Academy; a suited and bespectacled man cast in bronze. There wasn't much of a family resemblance, he thought; but then, Adam had never been all that good with faces. Perhaps that, coupled with time's power to wear away at metal, had served to mask the visual similarities between the two. Or perhaps the statue was created by someone who had only a poor quality photograph of old Abraham to work with. In the end, Adam thought, it probably didn't matter that much, but it gave him something to ponder as he navigated the hallways of the school.

When at last he emerged through the large double doors that opened into the main plaza, Adam's thoughts had moved from the nature of the statue to the list of locations he had been given for the stone door that led to Philemon's realm. The statue had been mentioned on that list, after all; and sure enough, it was the first thing he saw, pressed against the marble plinth that rose up beneath and behind the statue itself.

The statue stood in the center of the square, surrounded by walkways of white stone lined with red-painted wooden benches and the occasional pine tree or lamppost of polished steel. It occurred to Adam that he had never actually seen anyone polish the posts, and yet, they still shone as brightly as when he had first arrived despite being installed on school grounds.

Harold and Dana were standing just to the left of the black stone door, engaged in a discussion that he was as of yet too far to hear, while Judy stood behind them with a tablet held in her right hand.

"...what led me down that path in the first place," Harold said as Adam drew closer. "And given where the victims were found, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a connection."

"A connection to what?" Adam asked.

"Oh, there you are," Dana said. "Harold was just explaining this one bit of history he came across last night."

"He certainly did a better job of finding stuff than I did," Judy added. "The best I could find on the Internet were references to a Livejournal account that doesn't exist anymore and was used by some Japanese kid about five years ago."

"Livejournal?" Adam asked.

"It's what people had before Tumblr," Dana said. "Anyway, Harold, do you mind starting over so Adam can catch up?"

"No problem," Harold replied. "Basically, I came across some newspaper articles about a serial killer who was active a hundred years ago. Exactly a hundred years, in fact: the articles were all published in 1914."

"I wouldn't have expected that killings back then would be relevant to today," Adam said. "Although I guess you wouldn't be bringing them up if you didn't think so."

"Exactly," Harold said. "Due to the individuals who fell prey to the killer, the deaths were referred to as the Unhallowed Slayings. There were only four victims found, but they were all holy men. Two priests, a rabbi, and what the articles called a 'Mahometan preacher'." He paused, his eyes narrowed slightly as though focused on some specific thought. "I...think they meant he was a Muslim."

"It's not a term that gets used anymore," Dana said. "Mostly because it can imply that they worship Mohammed."

"The thing is," Harold continued, "the victims were each killed about four weeks apart, and always on the night of a full moon."

"You're saying that you think it was the Shadows?" Adam asked. "Way back then?"

Harold frowned. "Maybe. The killings were described as ritualistic, though; so if it was the Shadows, the killer would have been more like Ahriman than the mindless beasts we usually face. But as I was about to tell Dana before you got here, what's really odd is where the bodies were found." He paused, then pointed downward. "Here."

"Wait, there were dead bodies at the school?" Judy asked.

"The Academy hadn't been built yet," Harold said. "But they were found on what would eventually become the grounds of Westbrook Academy, yes."

"There's no way that's all a coincidence," Adam said.

"It does seem unlikely," Dana replied. "A serial killer slaying his victims on a full moon. The killings having ties to religion..."

"What does religion have to do with this?" Judy asked.

"Good question," Dana said, her voice adopting a sarcastic tone. "Why don't you summon the Greek goddess of crossroads and ask her yourself? I'll do the same with a certain Great Duke of Hell that I can call up."

Judy raised a finger as though to argue, but lowered it just as quickly. "Okay, that's a fair point. Although it does make me wonder why our Personas take on those forms."

"A question I've been seeking an answer to myself," Dana replied. "Although I suspect it's an answer tied into these four killings. I assume the guilty party was never found, Harold?"

"Got away clean," Harold said. "So, basically, what all this boils down to is that the Academy was built on the site of ritualistic murders that bear an eerie similarity to the Shadows. The main difference, though, is that I'm guessing none of us are..." He stopped suddenly, then turned to face Adam, his eyes suddenly wary. "...ordained."

Dana sighed. "I told you nothing good ever comes from that word." Her eyes widened suddenly. "Wait, could that mean that Ahriman was after Adam specifically?"

"He tried to kill me first, remember," Harold said. "And from what he said, I doubt he would have stopped with just any one of us."

"Either way, we're going to have to fight," Judy said. "And if those killings are related to the Shadows being around now, then we need to figure out what we're going to do with this information." She lifted her hand to her forehead, where Adam could notice a few out-of-place hairs hanging from the left side of her face, but before her fingers brushed against those strands her hand froze and her eyes widened with sudden realization. "Of course! Our Personas!"

"What about them?" Adam asked.

"The reason we can call them up is so we can fight the Shadows, right?" Judy didn't wait for a response before continuing. "If the killings then are related to the Shadows now, then wouldn't our Personas be able to do something in response?"

"Like what?" Harold said.

"...I'm not sure," Judy said. "But I am sure that right now, Hecate and the rest are our best shot. We were given their power so that we could fight the Shadows, but judging from what Adam did the other day, I'd say they have way more power than we'd need if we were just supposed to pick off the stragglers as they appear."

"I'm going to have to agree with Judy on this," Dana said. "Perhaps we should meet up here again tonight, around the usual patrol time. There's not much point trying to do anything that depends on our Personas at a time when bringing them out would just cause panic."

"I guess I can find something to do until then," Adam said. "Text me or something once it's time."

* * *

><p>It took a few minutes after departing the discussion before the weight of it had truly settled upon Adam Burton. The 'ordained path', Igor had said, and the door as well. The dual meaning of the word had not escaped him even then, but learning about the victims of the century-old killings had made it all too clear.<p>

"Really hate feeling like this," Adam muttered to himself, not entirely aware of his surroundings. He knew he was walking along a shaded side path of white stone that led towards his dorm, but beyond that dim awareness, his mind was dedicated to processing the full impact of what Harold had uncovered. The very idea that it didn't matter anymore what he wanted, that all relevant choices had been made...

"Did you say something?"

Adam started and looked up. Sitting on a wooden bench a short ways ahead, facing in the direction of the surrounding forest, was another Westbrook student. He was tall, although a touch too broad-shouldered to qualify as lanky, and wore a navy blue suit and slacks. He nodded his head sideways towards Adam, shaking a few strands of brown hair loose from an otherwise clean, if short, haircut. A notebook computer sat open on his lap.

"You're...Adam, right?" the young man asked. His voice was slightly high-pitched, although the accent reminded Adam of an actor from those commercials that showed long-dead presidents promoting something anachronistic. "I saw you talking with Dana the other day."

Adam nodded. "And you are?"

"Timothy," he replied. "Penzig, I..." He trailed off and smiled awkwardly. "Just call me Tim. Are you doing okay? Seems like you've got something pretty heavy on your mind."

"It's...complicated," Adam said. "And it'd take a lot of work to explain."

"Well, I'm told I'm a good listener," Tim replied. "And it's not like I have much else to do right now." He gestured to the other half of the bench on which he sat and closed the lid of the notebook. "Plus, I'm thinking about going into social work or something after college, so I can use the practice."

Adam exhaled slowly and began to walk towards the bench. "It's...well, the day I arrived, I..." He frowned as he sat down, searching for a way to explain the strange events that didn't risk making him sound completely detached from reality. "There are things about what I'm doing here that just seem..."

"You mean classes?" Tim asked.

"No," Adam said. "And that's where the complicated part comes in. It's more a matter of stuff that I know I have to do, things I have no choice about. Nothing illegal, just...well, it makes me feel like my fate has already been cast."

"There's no such thing as fate," Tim said. "At best, it's a thing people make up so that they don't have to feel bad when things go wrong for reasons beyond their control. At worst..." He trailed off. "At worst, it's a lie that other people use to gain control."

"I'd like to think that," Adam said. "But some of the stuff that's been happening to me lately...it's like someone or something else has already decided it."

"Then it's not fate," Tim replied. "There's a difference between 'destined' and 'decided'. And if you don't want to go along with the decision...well, is anything forcing you to do so?"

"I don't know," Adam said. "To any of that. I don't know where the path is leading, and I don't know if I'm being forced to walk it. It certainly feels like it, but..."

"You just started at a new school, Adam," Tim said, then smiled gently. "A major shakeup like that can make anyone feel like they're losing control of their own situation. I hate to just say something like 'give it time', but at this point that may be the best option. If you decide later that you don't like the path you feel like you're being forced to walk, then find a new one. You still have time to shape your own future."

"I hope you're right," Adam said, slowly, to which Tim shrugged slightly. "Well, you're being vague enough that it's hard for me to provide anything more concrete than that. I'm sure you have a good reason for it, but I really hope you can find someone to talk to about it in more detail, whether or not it's me." He frowned. "I know what it's like to feel as though you have no choice, particularly when the only option you seem to have is one you want nothing to do with. And I wouldn't wish that feeling of powerlessness on anyone."

"So, this is personal experience talking, is what you're getting at?" Adam asked.

"Something like that," Tim said. "It's kind of a personal matter, and at the risk of coming across as a hypocrite, I'd rather not get into it just yet." He chuckled. "I suppose that's why I can understand your own hesitation to elaborate on whatever it is that's on your mind." He paused and adjusted his position slightly. "Listen, if you want to talk to me again, I usually wind up sitting at this bench for a while after class gets out. It's a decent enough place to get started on homework." He gestured to the woods in the distance. "I mean, you have to admit, the view is excellent.

Adam looked towards the forest, and smiled. "Yeah. That it is."

* * *

><p><em>I am thou...<em>

_Thou art I..._

_Thou shalt be empowered when creating a Persona of the Fortune Arcana..._

* * *

><p>Curfew in the Westbrook Academy dorms was at 9:30 PM, although it was extended to 10:45 PM on Friday and Saturday evenings. That much, Adam knew from the handbook that still sat alone on his bookshelves. What the handbook didn't say was that decades of teenagers being teenagers had resulted in the discovery or creation of several methods by which curfew could be broken, frequently without the teachers and other staff even suspecting.<p>

For Adam, the most readily accessible method was through a fire escape that some enterprising predecessor of his had learned could have its alarm silenced by placing a sufficiently strong magnet near the strike plate of the door. He didn't think anyone was watching as he carefully opened the door, but even if there was someone, hopefully the butterfly mask he had been given would serve to hide his identity from any student that caught a glimpse.

It was just short of midnight when Adam had gathered with the others, not far from the stone door at the statue from earlier that day. Harold and one of the girls had already arrived - both carrying duffel bags over their shoulders, Adam noticed, and wearing the same butterfly masks as himself - but barely had the time to greet them before the last of the four made her presence known as well.

"So, what's the plan?" Adam asked.

The newest arrival reached into her pockets and pulled out her phone, then held it skyward. "Hecate!" Light flashed, and the three-faced woman from Tuesday appeared before them once more. Judy lowered her phone as Hecate turned her head towards her summoner, three pairs of eyes fixed directly forward.

"There are Shadows here, somewhere. Can you sense them?"

Hecate's middle face frowned, while the left and right glanced in either directions. After a pause, though, she nodded.

"Can you lead us towards them?"

Another nod. Judy turned towards Adam. "So here's the plan. We spread out and chase down Shadows, and each time we find one we mark it on a map. We'll meet up here in half an hour, and compare..."

The silver key-mace swing downward, cutting through the air between Judy and Adam. "Or not."

"Are the Shadows too strong?" Dana asked, to which Hecate shook her head.

"Are there too few of them?" Harold asked. Hecate nodded, then shook her head again.

"Yes, and no," Dana said. "Hmm...is it not a matter of their numbers, then?"

A nod.

"Is it their location?"

Nod.

"But you can lead us to them."

Nod.

"Then lead the way," Judy said. "Hopefully this'll make sense when we get there."

* * *

><p>Hecate led the four students down the stone paths of the Westbrook Academy grounds. The lights that normally lined the path had gone dark, and although the moon was still gibbous, its light served only to add slightly fainter patches of shadow to those that lay upon the ground. Harold had his phone out and pointing forward, the flash of its camera repurposed as a makeshift flashlight.<p>

They had been moving in near-silence for three minutes before Adam finally spoke.

"Is there a reason Hecate didn't simply say where we're going?"

"It doesn't work like that," Judy replied. "Hecate doesn't talk. None of our Personas do."

Adam had been puzzled by the pantomime between Hecate and his friends. Talos had spoken, or at least something claiming to be Talos, back during that first battle with Ahriman. Yet the communication earlier had indeed been wholly one-sided, at least so far as spoken language went. "They don't speak to you at all?"

"No, but..." Judy trailed off. "Hecate isn't entirely something distinct from me, so we can still understand one another. But at the same time, we don't share one mind. I can feel...intents, emotions. But nothing more complicated."

"I don't even get that much," Dana added. "I feel like Vapula both is and isn't me. It's not that we're different individuals, so much as different...iterations, I guess, of the same person. As though my Persona is what I could have been, had things gone differently."

"Which is why you prefer to command Vapula by speaking?" Adam asked, only for Dana to shrug. "I suppose. It just doesn't feel right to do otherwise."

"What about you, Adam?" Harold asked.

"I'm..." Adam paused. "I don't know, actually. Talos basically acted alone. I didn't issue any conscious commands. I just knew that I couldn't let Ahriman win. Perhaps Talos responded to that somehow."

He still wasn't sure how much detail to go into about the Velvet Room, Igor, and the contract. He had mentioned the latter two (if only obliquely in Igor's case), but the others had been reluctant to speak of their experiences, and out of some unspoken sense of propriety, Adam had done the same.

"Perhaps," Harold said hesitantly. "It does sound rather like how I control Marduk, although..."

"We're here," Judy broke in with as Hecate came to a sudden stop.

* * *

><p>He sat on a throne, in and before the light.<p>

The throne was not in any sort of room or castle, not as human senses could perceive it or human minds could comprehend it. Yet a throne it was, one fit for an entity such as he: a being of azure radiance, a majestic presence whose wisdom was a beacon that shone across countless worlds.

"They approach the Gate of Coins."

His voice echoed in the realm that held the throne. It was a realm that had other denizens, although only one was present to hear him speak: a blue-skinned man clad in red armor, with wings of silvery light streaming from his back.

"This poses a problem, my lord?"

He frowned. "Perhaps. It will upset matters, that much is certain. Nyarlathotep will think me responsible for the incursion, and act accordingly. And they are not yet strong enough to breach the Vault. Should they enter the Gate, they might learn that strength, but the risk in such a thing is nonetheless...significant."

"Should I stop them?"

"No." His pause was more to marshal his thoughts than to draw breath, as he had no need to do the latter. "That would require me to reveal things that must remain secret. Observe, but do not interfere until I decree otherwise. Should escalation prove necessary, your presence there will doubtless prove critical."

The blue-skinned man dropped to one knee. "Thy will be done, my lord."

* * *

><p>Adam glanced around. They were almost at the midpoint of the perimeter wall. He pulled his phone out, and opened up Maps. <em>The north wall, then.<em>

"I don't see any Shadows," Harold said cautiously, his own phone still clutched tight in hand, its camera flash still serving to light the surrounding area. "Perhaps..."

**GONG**

His voice was cut off suddenly by a loud ringing sound as Hecate struck her key against a patch of dirt, before raising it and pointing the tip towards Harold.

"That's strange," Dana said as she looked at the ground. The key had left an inch-deep mark in the soil, yet there was no visible reason why such a sound should have emerged. "Even by our recent standards."

"And what am I supposed to..." Harold asked, but his words cut of as Hecate tapped the silver key lightly against Harold's right hand. The implication did not escape him.

"Marduk!"

A flare of light shone from the phone's display, and a purple-armored Persona began to take shape to Harold's rear. Even before the form had resolved into Marduk, though, Harold's eyes had widened in shock.

"How did I never see this before?" he asked.

"See what?" Judy said.

"Those doors." Harold's voice quieted as he pointed towards where Hecate's key had struck the earth. _No, not there,_ Adam realized. _The fence behind it._ "It...there's no way they were there before tonight."

"Is it the Persona that's letting you see it?" Adam asked, but Dana shook her head in response. "I don't think so," he said. "Or if it is, it's something unique to Marduk and Harold. Judy apparently didn't see anything like doors, even though Hecate was apparently able to sense something."

"Either way," Harold said, "they must have something to do with the Shadows. Marduk, are you able to..."

Harold's voice fell silent as his Persona stepped forward, pulling the greatsword from its back as it moved. The blade flashed in the light cast by the phones as it fell, a swift vertical stroke that passed through the fence yet somehow failed to cut it. The air warped around where the sword had cut, and slowly, two baroquely carved doors of blackened iron began to take shape. Pentacles were prominent in several areas of the design, along with figures that Adam recognized as depicting the peculiar range of Shadows that had stood at Ahriman's flank just three days earlier.

"That's..." Adam exhaled. "Those are Shadows carved into the doors. I'm guessing this is where Hecate was trying to lead us."

"What's the plan, then?" Judy asked. "If these doors lead to wherever the Shadows are coming from, we're probably going to be doing a lot of fighting once we're on the other side."

Harold frowned. "I'm not sure," he said, then turned to Adam. "Any suggestions? Philemon kept going on about how you're going to act as our champion, so I'm hoping that he did so for a good reason."

Adam narrowed his eyes, letting his gaze wander across the doors as he thought things over. "I don't think we can have a plan yet," he finally said. "We don't know enough about what's on the other side to make one. We don't even know what'll happen when we open the doors. We might get Shadows pouring out by the hundreds, or we might get the whole school sucked into some freaky netherworld."

"So, we shouldn't open the doors?" Judy asked, but Adam shook his head. "No, that's not what I'm saying. There's a reason why Hecate led us here, and why Marduk revealed the doors to the rest of us. And I doubt it's so that we can just walk away and pretend they don't exist." He paused, then slowly exhaled. "Dana, get Vapula out. We're going in. All I can tell you for now is to be ready for anything."

Dana and Harold dropped their duffel bags to the ground at those words, and opened them. Harold removed the sword from within and strapped it to his waist, while Dana pulled out a bow and quiver. They went across her back, after which she removed her phone from her pocket and thrust it upward.

And with that, Adam raised his phone skyward as well. The gesture was almost reflexive, as though from muscle memory that he had never actually formed, and for a moment there was a sense of dissonance before he _understood_. The contract that Adam had signed may have marked him with a great responsibility, but now that he knew his mask for what it was, he also knew how to pull it from his face.

"Talos!"

And from what seemed a great distance, Adam heard Dana's voice cry out as well. "Vapula!"

The screens on their phones shone brightly, then went dark as two new Personas took shape in the center of the group. They moved to the side as Marduk stepped forward, pressed its hands to the caved doors and pushed. The sound of stone grinding against stone filled the air as they opened into a place of near-darkness, with only a floor made of some sort of greenish stone visible in the near-darkness.

"After you, then," Harold said.

* * *

><p>The place beyond the carved doors remained dark as the four students and their Personas stepped through. The faint clacking sound of footsteps on stone was the only sensory experience any could identify.<p>

"This feels...familiar," Harold said as he stepped through, Marduk bringing up the rear just behind. "I'm not exactly sure wh..."

The doors slammed shut before he could finish his sentence, and with the vanishing of the outside world came the appearance of a pale green light. _No, not light._ Adam recognized it immediately: wherever or whatever this place was, it was frozen in time in exactly the same way as the Shadow Hour that Ahriman had created.

Adam's head turned this way and that as he tried to take in his new surroundings. The carved iron doors that had led him from Westbrook Academy to this strange place stood behind him, although there was no wall to hold them in place. Instead, there was only a square platform of green stone, about the same size as one of the Academy classrooms, suspended in what Adam could swear was the vast void of outer space. Another pair of iron doors were visible ahead, of the group, the patterns seemingly a perfect match for the pair that led them where they now found themselves. And off to the side, stood...

"That's the stone door that led us to Philemon," Dana said, pointing towards it.

"What's it doing here, though?" Judy asked.

"I really wish I knew," Harold said. "But he can't be involved with the Shadows...can he?"

"Wouldn't be the first time he's kept stuff from us," Judy replied. "Still, I think you're right. Philemon wouldn't have been pulling all the crap he has been over the past month if he had any power over the Shadows."

"Unless we're just cleaning up his mess," Adam said. "You said Philemon likes being secretive, right? Maybe this is one of those secrets."

Dana frowned. "I didn't expect to hear that from you." She raised her hands, palms outward, in a sudden placating gesture. "I mean, I'm aware that we haven't know each other for long. It's just that it's usually Judy who assumes the worst about Philemon."

"If so," came a sudden voice, "then that is a sign of great wisdom."

Adam started and spun in the direction of the voice, noticing the others doing much the same out of the corner of his eye. The second pair of iron doors had opened, and through them slid a red-scaled serpent. Adam could glimpse only a long hallway with gray walls before the doors closed shut.

The new arrival was some ten feet in length, with two pairs of batlike purple wings folded against the sides of its body. The head of the serpent had six eyes in a long row, although the theater mask it wore only covered the middle two. Like with Ahriman, its mask seemed to shift between black and white as the head of the serpent moved. "To trust Philemon," it said, "is to trust...well, I suppose for me to compare your master to a snake would have confusing implications." A faint smile seemed to appear around the edges of the serpent's mouth as a snake tongue flicked outward for a brief instant. "Nevertheless, I doubt that the underlying meaning of the term is beyond your power to comprehend."

The serpent's voice was a deep, smooth one with an accent that Adam could not place. In some ways it was British, in others closer to a middle Eastern tone. Regardless, it was obvious that the serpent was in fact...

"A Shadow," Harold said. It was not a question, nor did it need to be.

"Indeed," the serpent replied. "I am a Shadow...the true self. His true self." It unfurled its wings, and this time, Adam was certain that the Shadow was grinning. "Behold, mortals. You stand in the presence of Samael."


	6. In the Presence of Shadow

_Since I need something to pad out the start of each chapter so that it doesn't screw up the formatting on the epigraph, here's a completely pointless disclaimer containing information that should surprise nobody: all the SMT Persona stuff in this belongs to Atlus, I'm not trying to steal it and make my own game or anything, etcetera etcetera._

* * *

><p><em>"...the only way out is deeper in."<br>-Dana Schuler_

* * *

><p>"Personas forward, now!" Adam barked, but even as Talos and the others advanced, Samael remained still.<p>

"Stay your hand, mortals," Samael said. "I am not here to do battle. Not yet, at least." The Shadow smiled. It was a cold smile, inhuman, befitting its serpentine form. "Were that what I desired at this time, I assure you that you would already be dead. For now, I merely wish to speak with you."

"About what?" Dana asked. There was a hesitance to her voice, an obvious tone of doubt and distrust. Yet Samael either did not notice or did not care. "About what it is you seek in this place. For I doubt you have any understanding of precisely where you have found yourself."

The four students looked at each other. Adam nodded, and Talos and the other Personas began to back off, as though sensing the changes to the immediate atmosphere. "And you plan to tell us this."

"Of course," Samael replied. "Your master keeps so many secrets from you, after all. To reveal them before he wishes it will vex him in ways Lord Nyarlathotep finds most pleasing." Samael's eyes surveyed the four students, none of whom showed any signs of surprise. "Ah, but you know of him already. I suppose Ahriman forced your master's hand when bloodlust overcame what little good sense that fool of a Shadow could claim."

"That doesn't tell us where we are," Dana said.

"No, it does not." Samael bowed its head. "My apologies. You have passed through the Gate of Coins, and stand at the entrance to the First Labyrinth. It is the place my servants call home, and it is where a treasure of great power is kept."

"And you want to stop us from reaching it?" Judy aked. "Then why..."

"Stop you?" Samael said, laughing. "Hardly. I want you to retrieve it."

For several seconds, there was silence. Harold was the first to speak. "What."

"You heard me correctly, Harold Westbrook," Samael said. "Sadly, there are secrets that even I must keep, and so I cannot reveal the nature of the treasure yet. Worry not; the scales will fall from your eyes soon enough. And when that happens, you will understand."

"But why are you telling us to retrieve it?" Adam asked. "Why can't your Shadows do it for you?"

"The vault that holds the treasure," Samael said, "is protected from my kind. No Shadow can breach the vault without incurring great risk. And there are...other matters as well."

"Such as?" Dana said.

Samael's eyes closed for a moment. "Unlike you," the Shadow said as they opened, "I lack free will. Mind you, I am no simple marionette that dances only when someone pulls the strings. I can act independently to a degree, but if Lord Nyarlathotep commands me, I must obey. And he has commanded me to prevent any, save himself, from attempting to breach the vault and retrieve its contents."

"So we have to fight our way through as well?" Harold said.

"I am afraid that you are correct," Samael said. "But that is why you came here, is it not? To destroy the Shadows that threaten your world?" It grinned again. "This would therefore be what your species refers to as a 'win/win'."

And with those words, the doors behind Samael opened once more. "We shall meet again when you have reached the vault." Samael's wings flared wide, and darkness gathered around him before fading just as swiftly, the Shadow disappearing with it.

* * *

><p>"Samael is full of crap, you realize."<p>

The Shadow had not even been gone for a second before Judy spoke. Then again, Adam knew, her words were hardly inaccurate.

"Of course I do," Adam said. "He's obviously got some scheme going on. I expect he'll double-cross us the second we lay hands on that treasure, assuming it even exists."

"The thing is, I don't think it matters," Dana added. "Whatever the nature of the trap, the only way out is to spring it. There are almost certainly more Shadows within the labyrinth; I doubt Hecate would have led us here otherwise."

Harold frowned. "I'm more concerned that I was the only one to have seen the...Gate, Samael called it?"

"The Gate of Coins," Adam said.

"Right, that," Harold continued. "As I was saying, it bothers me that none of you could see the Gate until Marduk opened it. And that's setting aside the presence of Philemon's stone door. Why would it even exist here unless he has some tie to this place? To the Shadows?"

"Unless it's because the door moves around," Adam replied. "Maybe it's following us? Or, no, you said there was a pattern to its movements..."

"We can worry about it later," Dana said. "For now, I'm guessing our priority is the Shadows. I assume Adam is still running this expedition?"

"For now," Harold said. "We need to see if Philemon's trust is warranted. Unless anyone has an objection?"

None of the others responded right away. After a moment, Judy was the first to break the silence. "Eh, one's as good as any other right now. Let's just find out what exactly this place is, and what sort of trap Samael has set for us."

"Alright," Adam said. "Personas forward. Talos, you take up the rear. Everyone stick together and keep your eyes open."

And with those words, four humans and four Personas strode forward through the labyrinth's doors.

* * *

><p>And as the iron doors closed behind the eight figures, a ninth closed its eyes and fell to one knee.<p>

The ninth figure had been well-hidden, of course. Blue skin and red armor aside, he had always been good at concealing his presence. Still, Samael had put those skills to the test, and he had very nearly been found wanting.

"My lord Philemon," the figure said. "Your agents have entered the Labyrinth."

_And you did not follow?_

The voice in which Philemon spoke was not one that he, or any other, could hear. Still, the words were clear enough.

"No, my lord," the figure replied. "I could not risk exposure."

_You would not have escalated further by your presence. The Labyrinths and the Vaults are..._

The figure interrupted. "Samael was present, my lord."

Philemon fell silent.

"He seeks to breach the Vault of Coins, and doubtless the others as well. He even tried to convince your agents to assist him. They did not agree to do so, of course; they suspect duplicity on Samael's part. Nevertheless, if I were to be perceived as moving against Samael, it would escalate regardless of location. Especially if one of Nyarlathotep's servants seeks what was sealed away within."

_The Vaults are but a means to an end, I expect. If it is Samael who seeks their contents...well, all they that take the sword, I suppose. _Philemon was rarely been given to displays of emotion, and never to amusement; nevertheless, there was no other manner than 'amusement' in which the figure could now describe Philemon's voice. _You have done well, my servant. Return to our halls, for there is yet much work to be done if we are to take full advantage of the serpent's gambit._

"As you command, my lord."

* * *

><p>Samael's form had obscured the hallway when the Shadow had emerged. But now that Adam and the others had gone through those doors, the nature of the labyrinth was laid plain.<p>

Or at least, as close to plain as anything worthy of being called a labyrinth could be.

As he had seen previously, the walls were gray in color, crafted from a metal that Adam could now tell bore baroque carvings much like those of what Samael had called the 'Gate of Coins'. The floor was tiled with black marble, although the same green not-light that was present here as well gave it a pallor the color of artichokes. He glanced upwards, towards the ceiling, but could not see it Instead, the metal walls reached upwards, higher and higher, lines that eventually converged at some far-distant point.

"Freaky," was Judy's sole observation.

"Aren't there supposed to be Shadows here?" Harold added.

"That's what Samael claimed, yes," Dana replied. "I don't see any sign of them, though." She paused. "Could be further in, depending on how much he can influence the other Shadows despite Nyarlathotep's orders. And depending on how much Samael was telling the truth."

"I vote 'more than we want him to' and 'not at all', respectively," Judy said.

"Regardless, we need to stay together," Adam said. "Samael called this the 'First Labyrinth', which means that we're wandering into a maze. We need someone who can draw a map. Any volunteers?"

There was silence.

"Alright," Adam said. "Let's make sure to bring something with us next time, then. Paper and pencil, a big ball of string, bread crumbs, whatever. For now, we can't go too far in. Scout out the first floor, maybe. Turn right at every possible opportunity...we stick to that wall, eventually we'll make our way back here to the exit."

The others were still silent.

"Can you even..." Adam began to say, only to trail off as he turned around to see what had caused that silence. The doors were gone, with only a seamless wall remaining. "Okay," he said. "Plan B. Stick to the right wall, and hopefully we won't eventually find ourselves back here."

"This...was this a trap?" Dana said, her voice wavering and her eyes slowly widening in fear. "No, can't have...I can't let myself think that way. But..."

Judy placed a hand on Dana's shoulder, although the other girl did not seem to notice. "If Samael only wanted to lure us into an inescapable maze," Judy said, "why go to all the trouble of talking to us and convincing us of some mysterious treasure? Why not just show up, intentionally miss an attack or two, then flee? We'd chase after, he'd pull his vanishing act, and we'd be stuck here. Same result, but with far fewer chances for it to go wrong."

"And there's the way Hecate reacted," Harold added. "Along with Marduk's ability to reveal the door here. We came to this labyrinth for a reason, and it's one that our Personas already know."

Dana exhaled slowly, then nodded. "You're right. We'll figure out where to go, even if the only way out is deeper in."

"Glad you're on board," Adam said. "Let's go."

* * *

><p>The 'First Labyrinth', Adam soon decided, did indeed live up to its name.<p>

The group was still on the first floor, but beyond that Adam wasn't sure of much. He didn't think they were going in circles, given the strategy he had come up with, although it had barely taken two turns before the walls and halls had begun to blur together. As for the Shadows, there didn't seem to be any sign of them yet.

"If I didn't know better," Dana said as she glanced towards Vapula, "I'd swear we were alone here." The catlike Persona's arched back and fur standing on end made it plain that it, at least, sensed a threat of some kind. Adam nodded in response. "We'd best not split up, then. I know it's important to find a way out, but I've seen enough horror movies to know how that particular tactic would end."

"And I'd rather not be the first victim," Harold said before turning his head towards Marduk, who slowed its pace until it stood at the rear of the group. "We'll let you know if something tries to sneak up," he added.

The students and their Personas continued to stride down the hallways, turning right and right again before coming to a stop as the hall opened up into a large chamber about the size of a movie theater. Two metal pillars, with carvings that perfectly matched the walls, rose up from the floor and stretched onward into that impossible-to-locate ceiling. And near those pillars...

"Wait, up there." Harold's voice, just short of being a whisper, came from behind Adam and slightly to his right. "Left pillar, in the middle of the room." Adam frowned and squinted slightly, and sure enough, just beside that pillar was a poorly illuminated figure that the youth man found himself to be immediately certain was that of a Shadow.

The certainty struck Adam as odd for a moment, but he soon shrugged it off. An artifact of his Persona ability, perhaps; or maybe that certainty came from Talos rather than himself. In the end, it really didn't matter, so long as that certainty was accurate. Which, given where Adam and his friends were currently located, was all but guaranteed to be the case.

"Anyone recognize which type of Shadow we're looking at?" Adam asked, but there was no response. "Fine, we go in cautiously. If I remember from that battle before we faced Ahriman, Judy said that the one wheel was weak against wind attacks Do all Shadows have some sort of weakness like that?"

"We believe so," Dana said. "But we haven't fought enough different ones to be sure yet."

"Then we unleash as wide a range of attacks as we can," Adam said. "One of our Personas should have something that'll do the trick. Everyone ready?"

The others nodded.

"On three, then. If we're fast enough we might catch it by surprise. One...two...three!"

And with a loud yell, eight figures charged into the center of the room to do battle with the Shadow that lay within.

* * *

><p>One figure became four, too swiftly for human eyes to follow.<p>

The Shadows stood, huddled into a small pack and surrounded by the group of students and Personas. Two of them were familiar: the same blue-masked blobs that had been fought several times before Adam's arrival and Ahriman's attack. The others were different, though; at first, Adam found himself thinking that they couldn't actually be Shadows. After all, what sort of freaky masked monster looked like a dinner table?

Then again, Adam supposed, they weren't _exactly_ dinner tables. Both members of the second pair of Shadows looked the same, though. Small circular tables covered in a blue and white checkered tablecloth, with a blue theater mask hanging down across one side. Floating above each table, moving in some indiscernible pattern, was a collection of items: a small sword, a silver goblet, a polished wooden rod, and an oversized golden plate upon which a pentacle had been carved.

It took barely a second for this to go through his mind, but in that time, the others had already begun their attack. "The blobs are weak to fire!" Harold called to Adam as Marduk's blade parried a blow from one such Shadow. "Marduk can handle them; you deal with the tables!"

Adam turned towards the tables just in time to see a lance of ice flying towards him. Before he could even think to move, Talos had moved to block, the bronze figure seeming to cringe in pain as frost began to spread over the Shadow's metallic skin. Yet this did not seem to slow Talos down any; he charged forward with his spear held low, and swept it across the offending table-Shadow. One of the legs flew off entirely, while the other three seemed to buckle as though they had knees.

The other members of the group were holding their own as well, Adam could see. Harold and Marduk had already reduced one of the blobs into blackened motes, while Vapula had clamped its jaws down onto the other table and was shaking it about fast enough that it seemed a wonder that the hovering items hadn't gone flying halfway across the labyrinth. Hecate and Judy had crushed or broken most of the limbs of the surviving blob, with only two blade-shaped arms, clearly being held in a defensive position, still attached and ambulatory.

Judy gave her blob a fierce kick, and the last two blades melted back into its body. "We've got an opening!" she cried out. "Hit them hard and don't let up!" Her words seemed to rally student and Persona alike; as the surviving Shadows lay stunned on the floor, eight figures charged towards them with violent intent plain upon their faces.

When Adam thought back on the final moments of this battle, he would not be able to remember the details of what happened. It was a cloud of chaos, blows raining down upon the fallen Shadows too swiftly and from too many sources for his memory to piece them into a string of events. All he would be able to remember was that when the dust had settled, not even the black motes of a defeated Shadow still lingered.

He would, however, remember the visions that forced themselves into his mind.

The first was of three empty spaces. On some level he knew what they were, or at least what they concealed: possibilities. He could not tell which one each space represented, but nevertheless he knew that he had to choose. And as Adam made his choice, the empty spaces ceased to be, replaced by a single Tarot card: Lovers.

The second was of a theater mask, cracked and stained, that rose from where the Shadows had fallen. It rotated once, twice, and on the third began to glow with a bright blue light that soon changed shape. Adam could make out a small human figure with dragonfly wings, but he could perceive no more detail than that before the figure flew towards him, too fast to dodge. It struck his chest, and although he tensed out of reflex, he did not feel an impact so much as a change; like he had become something more than he was before.

_I am Pixie. And my power is thine._

The words lingered in his mind as the visions ended. The other students had not moved; indeed, they did not seem to have noticed that anything had happened. "What..." Adam said.

"We won," Judy said. "At least, it looks like we did. Shadows destroyed, humanity protected once again." She smiled, then gestured towards the far end of the room. "And there's something down there, I think. Come on."

Sure enough, when the group had reached that far corner, a strange coil of orange copper stood next to a descending spiral staircase. "Not sure what the coil is, but..."

"It's the way out," Adam said. Again, it was knowledge that came to him with a foreign certainty. "I don't know how I know this, but..." He took a step closer. "Seize it with both hands, and focus on the Gate. Like so."

The copper was warm to the touch, he realized, and pulsed nearly in time with his own heartbeat. His thoughts turned to the Gate, and the Labyrinth dissolved around him into a sea of black.

* * *

><p>When Adam's vision returned, it was not by means of light.<p>

This was what he had expected, of course. It was not knowledge that had been given to him; at least, not with the certainty as the exit from the Labyrinth or the figure that became four Shadows. It was a prediction, but one that he felt had a high chance of being true. And sure enough, the students and their summoned Personas were once more standing at the center of the square stone platform that served as the entryway to the Labyrinth. The stone door that led to Philemon's realm was still present, although he could now see that something new had become visible next to it. Adam couldn't tell what it was, though: a doorframe, perhaps, although one comprised of nothing more than mere wisps of smoke.

"Are you okay?" Harold asked from behind Adam, although the voice seemed to be directed towards another. "When you didn't think there was an exit, you..."

"I'm fine," Dana replied as Adam turned to see the two of them speaking. "It was...well, I'd rather not get into it if that's okay. Bad memories and so forth."

"We're here if you need anything," Judy said, placing her hand lightly on Dana's shoulder. "You know that."

Dana smiled weakly. "I appreciate that. But right now, I'd like to focus on something else." She turned her head towards Adam, and her expression changed to a concerned frown. "Namely, how did you know that was the way out?"

"I told you," Adam said, "I don't know. It just..." His brow furrowed slightly as he rethought things. "All I know is the second I saw the exit, I knew what it was and how to use it. It seemed as obvious a properly as shape or color. Maybe it was..." He trailed off.

"Was what?" Harold said.

"That's not the only thing that came to me," Adam said. His phone was already back in his hand, the screen facing towards his Persona.

"Pixie!"

* * *

><p>The light that shone from his phone's screen this time seemed to flow both outward and inward. Talos's form wavered, seemingly translucent for a moment, then flashed with a bright blue burst of light. In his place floated a small feminine figure, maybe six inches tall, wearing a skintight blue jumpsuit cut to allow a pair of dragonfly wings to emerge from her back. The motion of the wings, Adam would later realize, was far too slow for flight to be sustained by conventional means; but at the time this was the furthest thing from the minds of any of the students.<p>

"Maybe it was because of this." Adam finished.

Jaws dropped. Even the Personas seemed shocked by Pixie's appearance, Adam thought, although in Marduk's case it was admittedly difficult to tell.

"You've got two of them now?" Judy said after several seconds. "That's just not fair."

"But how?" Dana said. "The way Philemon described it..."

"They're masks," Adam said. "At least, that's how he described them to me. And masks can be changed."

Harold frowned. "That's not at all what I was told. Philemon told me that Marduk was a reflection of my true self, born from...'the sea of my soul', I think he called it." Judy and Dana nodded in recognition.

Adam looked from Harold, to Pixie, then to the others. "Then why was I told something different? Why am I the only one who got the lecture about masks? Why am I the only one who can call forth more than one Persona?"

"I couldn't even begin to guess," Judy said as her. "Still, between your new Persona and Samael's request, one thing has become clear: there is far more going on here than we've been told."

Dana turned her head to face the stone door, her expression already growing cold. "Then I say it's about time that changed."

* * *

><p>The stone door seemed to work no differently on this side of the Gate of Coins than it had on the other. It opened at Dana's touch, with the same faint grinding noise as before, to reveal the same white stone floor and black marble table in the same false-darkened room that Adam remembered from earlier.<p>

Philemon stood at the far side of the table, his head already raised and looking towards the entrance. "Ah," he said. "I had not expected you would reach that door so soon. Still, this may yet be of use to the battle against Nyarlathotep. Do come in; I would prefer not to speak with you while you remain outside my domain."

Harold nodded and stepped through in, the others close behind. As the stone door closed shut behind them, Dana spoke, her voice terse and plainly frustrated. "The door. Why was it there? How was it there?"

Philemon's eyes closed behind the mask as he frowned. "I am afraid that to answer your question would require me to..."

"...reveal forbidden knowledge," Dana interrupted. "Too bad. You're going to answer that question anyway."

"No," Philemon said, his eyes open again. "Not until you have shown yourself to be capable of understanding what the answer truly means. And you are not yet capable."

"Right now, I don't think any of us care what you think." Adam glared fiercely at Philemon, a glare that he knew without looking was matched by the other students. "From what I've been told, you've been keeping secrets about what exactly we're up against since the first time Harold called up Marduk. So you're going to knock it off, or we're done working with you. We'll fight the Shadows alone."

Philemon was unmoved by Adam's ultimatum. "If you truly believed you no longer needed my aid in this conflict," he said, "you would not be making these threats."

"You haven't exactly been giving us a whole lot of aid anyway," Judy said. "Until the Shadows themselves starting telling us what was really going on, all you ever did was be a mysterious jackass who just loved to tell us that we're not allowed to know the answers to our questions."

"Including the question of why we're not allowed to know the answers," Dana added. "Which, as you might have figured out by now, has kind of been rubbing us the wrong way. Why do you keep hiding things from us? Why do you keep insisting that so much of what we need to know is forbidden? Why are you so obsessed with keeping secrets from us?"

Philemon frowned. His gaze narrowed, and seemed to grow harder. For a brief moment, Adam thought he saw something fierce in that normally stoic face. "You truly want the answer? I keep my secrets for a reason, and you know this."

"The fact that we **don't** know that," Dana said, "is precisely why we want the answer."

"Very well." Philemon said. "It is for a very simple reason: you are not the first."

* * *

><p>A man and a woman stood in a dark stone chamber.<p>

There was no better word for where they were than "chamber". The two of them had discussed this in the past, and were in very strong agreement on that point. But such linguistic matters were now far from the minds of either of the pair.

"You tried to have them killed," the woman said. Her voice was commanding in tone, but also cold. There was a vaguely imperious quality to it, as though she could not even begin to imagine that anyone would disobey her. "You tried to have a _student_ kill them. And you tempted that student using a power that should not be yours."

The man, however, seemed to have no intention of obedience. "I did what had to be done. What _we_ should have done, and would have been done if the rest of the Council had but a fraction of our founder's courage." Both the man and the woman wore long robes of gray cloth that hid the details of their shapes, and had hoods pulled down too far for either of them to see the other's faces. Still, the voices were recognizable, for the man as well as the woman. The man's voice, though, lacked the presence of his opponent; rather than cold calm, there was a smoldering contempt waiting to be stoked into full anger. "Philemon's little puppets..."

"Are still human beings," the woman interrupted. "We cannot let ourselves sink to Philemon's level, let alone Nyarlathotep's."

"Emancipation requires sacrifice," the man said. "You know those words as well as I do. You know the truth within them. Just as our founder did when he created the Gates, and sealed away that power."

"Those words do not give you the right to go against..."

"To Hell with the council!" the man screamed, his anger now burning bright. "And to Hell with you if you're too busy kissing their asses to see what's going on right in front of your eyes!"

The woman's eyes narrowed beneath the cowl. "We are charged to destroy evil. We are not charged to embrace it. If you are too blinded by your own zealotry to see the difference between the two...so be it." Her right hand raised upward as she spoke. "Valkyrie."

The anger in the man's voice vanished almost instantly, replaced by terror. "Please, no!" the man cried, but too late: a masked woman with long blond hair, wearing scale mail of polished steel and sitting atop a horse with blood-red hair had already appeared, called into being by the woman's voice. Valkyrie looked down at the man, and drew forth two long swords from the sheaths strapped to her back.

"You don't have to do this!" the man screamed. The woman let her glare waver for a moment, and then raised her hand in the universally recognized gesture of 'stop'. "You're right," she said. "I don't. And neither do you."

Valkyrie vanished in a flash of light. "Do not give me cause to call her forth a second time," the woman said, then turned and left.


End file.
